


The Lost Heir of Blaiddyd

by Mystic_Diamond



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Forgiveness, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Minor Dorothea Arnault/Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Minor Edelgard von Hresvelg/Lysithea von Ordelia, Minor Sylvain Jose Gautier/Bernadetta von Varley/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Postpartum Depression, Recovery, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22469989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mystic_Diamond/pseuds/Mystic_Diamond
Summary: “Wait a moment, did you say father? Marianne, don’t tell me you’re--”“I am pregnant, Father,” Marianne said. “The father is a man I met in the Kingdom after running away from home. I do not wish to share details about our relationship, but it was a brief affair that was left peacefully and without any harm to either of us. I fear I cannot introduce you to him because I do not wish for him to know. But I want the child all the same. Don’t try to convince me otherwise, because I won’t be swayed.”“Marianne, think about what you’re saying. If you do not intend to marry or even see the father again, then why even keep the child? It is not necessary to produce heirs anymore, not in the world the emperor is building.”“Is it strange for me to want to be a mother for my own sake and not to tie a man to me or for noble obligations?”Faerghus is gone, and they say that the king had his head torn from his shoulders by the emperor. But whispers among those still loyal to the dead king say that his bloodline has not died out, and that one day, his heir shall return to take Her Majesty's head.Marianne doesn't believe in repeating cycles. Neither does her daughter.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Marianne von Edmund, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 103
Kudos: 162





	1. prologue (i)

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to the Dimimari Initiative Discord Server for the long conversations we all shared over this fic idea and the feedback I received as I chugged this first chapter out! It had all started when one of you brought up CF!Dimitri's line about his bloodline continuing even if he dies and that one question led to a snowballing of ideas that eventually blossomed into this project of mine. I loved each and every discussion we had about this AU and it was so fun to share my writing with an audience before uploading it here.
> 
> Yes, I know that Dimitri was most likely referring to his uncle when he said that about his bloodline, but this is a fanfic. Let's have some fun (and some feels along the way)!
> 
> Warning for major character death and the consequences thereof. This does take place post-Crimson Flower, after all. I won't ever depict a character onscreen dying, but grief/mourning and learning to survive in the aftermath of a war are major themes. And the Unification War in this fic brought out more casualties than just the obvious ones. We'll learn as we go because I don't want to spoil but please turn back if you expected everyone to live to fawn over Dimimari's child.

It was hard to imagine that the world could ever turn itself upright again after such a devastating war, but sunlight crept into Marianne’s room through the window regardless, the first crack of dawn after what felt like a war that would never end.

The Church of Seiros had fallen, and the Adrestian Empire won the war. They reclaimed the entire continent under its flag, and people in Fodlan were left almost flustered at the unfamiliarity of the peace afterwards. They had all spent the past five years growing used to the sounds of clashing blades and the smell of fire alighting villages.

The violence had ended and the recently crowned emperor of Fodlan promised that a new world will arise from the ashes the war had wrought, one that would value the merit of one’s talents over the blood in their veins.

Marianne threw the back of her palm over her eyes at the sight of such bright morning light.  _ What am I going to tell him? _

Her adoptive father had been fumbling around for the past few days, and Marianne couldn’t blame him. The emperor’s first order of business after she ascended the throne of Fodlan was to declare noble bloodlines no longer relevant in her reign. Various noble houses had objected predictably, but they ended up being the first ones to have their wealth and prestige stripped away from them. Marianne predicted that the sight of formerly powerful men and women being forced to kneel before the calm and smooth-faced emperor would be a picture recorded in tapestries and paintings for decades to come.

_ Would Ignatz have tried to capture that image? No, he always preferred painting landscapes, didn’t he? Like that beautiful view he showed me once . . . . . . a pity I’ll never be able to see it with him again . . . . . . _

Frankly, she doesn’t think her adoptive father has anything to worry about. His capability as an orator was renowned throughout the Alliance and although the emperor made clear that her intention was to allow commoners and those without Crests to be able to take political power, she also implied that it was merit that she’ll be judging through as she appointed new figures in her political system. Edelgard would have to be a fool to think that the Margrave Edmund didn’t have the talent and skills to keep his position in the governing body.

Marianne had heard that Ferdinand shall still be ascending as Fodlan’s new Prime Minister, despite being the son of such an infamously corrupt and greedy man. Marianne didn’t talk to him such aside from a few conversations about the responsibilities of nobles that had left a bad taste in her mouth (part of her wondered if he had more to say to her before the monastery was attacked) but she wasn’t opposed to him still taking power in Edelgard’s new world. He had the aura of a kind and honest man, if not a tad overbearing and haughty.

Ferdinand had kept himself in Edelgard’s favor and he was rewarded with the position that had been promised to him since birth. The various nobles throughout Fodlan who were scrambling around in fear should honestly calm down, really. Margrave Edmund will most likely keep his position in the politics of Fodlan, only because of his actual qualifications as a leader and not because of frankly outdated traditions the Church had been preaching was the right way to judge worthiness.

But Marianne was not wringing her hands together because she was trying to find ways to tell her adoptive father that he was pacing back and forth in his office for silly reasons. She placed a hand over her chest and smoothed it down over her torso, letting the heel of her palm skid to a stop right over her womb.

_ What if he already knows? I tried my best to keep the symptoms as inconspicuous as possible, but what if he’s figured it out already? _

She had received a few recipes for elixirs in the mail from Mercedes to brew for the purpose of soothing the nausea that had overcome her recently. Marianne hoped both the staff and her adoptive father would assume she’s obsessed with a new dietary trend after finding strange herb combinations strewn about the kitchen (Hilda always did like to tease how clumsy and scatterbrained she could be at times).

She cannot hide this from him forever, she knew that at least. And she also knew in her heart that she wasn’t going to get rid of it either. Perhaps a scandal would’ve arose before if it got out that Margrave Edmund’s adoptive daughter had become heavy with child without a wedding ring in sight, but Emperor Edelgard had said this would be a new world after all, one without the obsession of birthright and inheritances. 

Since the Empire had won the war, Marianne had no obligation to inherit her adoptive father’s position as Margrave or to be married off to some other noble house. Before, having an illegitimate child would’ve ruined any noble-blooded woman forever, lessened their marriage prospects and tainted their reputation amongst the court, but Marianne could breathe easy now that she was sure that this news would no longer give her adoptive father reason to kick her out.

Rather, she feared that he would question who the father was.

Her hand clutched tightly at the fabric of her dress. She couldn’t lie and say she didn’t know who it was, because her adoptive father knew her well, knew she wasn’t that type of person, and even if he believed her, he would jump to the worst conclusion and assume she had been drugged and violated.

He had tried to arrange meetings with noblemen for her before--in preparations for the future, he had told her--and she had been so hopelessly gloomy and clumsy with them that he must’ve written off any ideas that his adoptive daughter had the ability to court anyone of her own free will. Maybe even theorized that she preferred women.

Marianne shifted her hand off of where she knew life was beginning to take shape and clutched at her blankets instead. Her knuckles turned white as she tried to carefully construct a lie in her head.

She knew he wouldn’t believe the truth if she told him.

* * *

_ When the war had started, Margrave Edmund declared his intent to remain neutral in the conflict, deciding to step back and eventually take the side of whoever’s overpowering the other. It was a cold and calculating move, but Marianne expected nothing less from the shrewd politician who took her in. For five years, her adoptive father had kept her sheltered from the violence, probably taking pride in the fact that he was protecting her like a good parent would, but Marianne found only feelings of guilt as she watched the people of Edmund territory ceaselessly fight back against invading armies from the safety of her window. _

_ She had felt like such a useless burden, having so many people suffer and potentially die to keep soldiers out of her adoptive father’s estate. Her darker thoughts had tried to convince her to step outside and let herself be pierced by an arrow, but she was kept back from indulging that thought when she imagined how much of a scramble her adoptive father would be left in if his only heir had died so fruitlessly. _

_ Perhaps the only solace she found during those five years was in reading the letters her old classmates had sent her. She was surprised to learn that Hilda had joined in on the frontlines alongside Claude, remembering how quickly the girl had suggested retreat when the monastery was attacked by the Empire. She felt heartened when Raphael told her that his little sister was safe and that Leonie managed to keep her village from getting invaded. She had smiled so brightly by herself in her room when Ignatz sent her a finished drawing of that gorgeous view he had shown her once, along with a hastily written letter detailing how hard it was salvage during the mad dash to escape the pillaged monastery. _

_ She didn’t know how to feel when Lysithea and Lorenz told her that they will be defecting to the Empire’s army. _

_ Lorenz had just sent her one missive before cutting off communications with her entirely, the handwriting so pristine and small that it looked forced, not scented with any perfumes Marianne knew Lorenz to be so fond of using when writing letters, the message extremely blunt and without any flourish to tell her that his father is making the wise decision to surrender to the Adrestian army before any harm falls to the common folk living in Gloucester territory and that he suggested Margrave Edmund do the same instead of painting a target on his back as he waited to see whose side to take. _

_ Marianne remembered how Lorenz had lavished her with compliments without any prompt, insisting that he was simply pointing out the obvious while she darkly believed he was trying to win favors with her adoptive father. She never got to ask him what exactly he saw in her that was so worthy of praise before the monastery fell. She had tried to write a letter to him back, to beg him to confess what he actually thinks of his father’s decision before realizing that Count Gloucester probably read all of his son’s correspondences before letting it fall into Lorenz’s hands, if not outright stare over Lorenz’s shoulder as the envelope was opened. _

_ Lysithea, on the other hand, had sent streams of messages to Marianne before halting entirely (most likely due to war effort). Her letters, unlike Lorenz’s, were clearly written by her own hand and Marianne could almost hear Lysithea’s voice as she read them, long paragraphs detailing the benefits of surrendering before anyone in her territory got hurt and a few sentences alluding that Adrestia’s ruthless conqueror was not what the Church and the nobility was painting her as.  _

_ Lysithea probably wasn’t allowed to go into too much detail, out of fear that the letters could be intercepted or read by Margrave Edmund, but from what Marianne could glean, the world Edelgard was trying to build is a place where the systems that had hurt both of them will no longer exist, will no longer be accepted as just. Lysithea had told Marianne that she would want to join the Adrestian army if only Edelgard were more open about her intentions about the war before her letters trickled to a stop. Her final words to Marianne were that she was excited to see the world Edelgard was building and wanted to Marianne to be there to see it. She told Marianne that she wanted her to be there to help build it, fight for it. She stopped writing to her when Marianne finally responded for the first time during their correspondence to tell her that she was too weak to make that kind of decision, not strong and assured like Lysithea was. _

_ Claude’s letters were perhaps the strangest out of all of her old classmates. Even though Marianne knew that he was engaging in extremely precarious negotiations with the nobles of the Leicester Alliance, Claude’s messages to her spoke of inane things like how beautiful the sea was when he visited it a few months ago before the war broke out or how Hilda managed to find time to thread a few necklaces together and take impromptu naps in between various fights and skirmishes. She wondered idly if there were any secret codes hidden between the lines or a whole other message written in invisible ink that could only be revealed through specific actions. _

_ Needless to say, she felt silly when she held one of Claude’s letters over a flickering candle to find nothing of invisible words and accidentally torched the parchment into ashes when one of the staff walked in on her to deliver her dinner. _

_ She felt ashamed knowing that she deliberately avoided Claude during their academy days after having a conversation that veered too close into her background, her birth parents, her cursed bloodline, and she knew she had to steer clear lest he figure out all of the things she and her adoptive father tried so hard to keep secret. His eyes were too bright, too curious, and she ended up scurrying away every time he approached her like a scared woodland creature. Hilda had teased her about it, told her that there’s nothing to be scared of, that Claude doesn’t bite, not unless you asked him to, and chortled when Marianne turned bright red at the suggestiveness of her tone. _

_ It probably made her look like a bad Alliance noble to be avoiding her house leader and future sovereign so much during the days she was supposed to be securing political connections, but when Marianne looked back on it, it was because she had wanted to spend more time with another house leader, the future ruler of another country that was not her own. _

_ She treasured the letters Dimitri had sent her the most during those dark five years holed up in her room. _

_ Their interactions at the monastery had started with her trying to shoo him off for his own safety and him giving her a gleaming smile in return, telling her that he must politely refuse and endeavored to protect her further, even if it came at the cost of his own well being. She at first thought this only sprang from foolishness and the stubborn martyrdom that seemed to be encouraged amongst the Blue Lions, only to learn that it came from the same desperate need to make up for the misfortune that he must cause from his presence alone that she recognizes so deeply within herself. She realized that much of his behavior mirrored hers, and that seeing him cause harm to himself so others won’t have to bear the burden made her heart hurt, even though she knew she did the exact same. _

_ His presence gave her a new perspective, and it made her want to do better. _

_ They continued to meet with each other after that dining hall conversation where she had let herself laugh in front of him, either doing group tasks with one another or simply eating lunch together in silence. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Blue Lions congregate together and it made her want to ask Dimitri why he’s alone with her and not with his future subjects but she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth. Part of her was afraid he would immediately regain common sense and leave her side to join them, and she didn’t know why the thought made her so upset. _

_ She had no ill thoughts of the Golden Deer, and in fact, she thought rather highly of them. They were all so driven and talented in ways she struggled to be, and even though conversations with them often ended abruptly by her own admission, she didn’t think any of them to be bad company. She was the odd one out, like she always was. _

_ The only classmate she had in her own house that she managed to become close to was Hilda, and that was only because the pink-haired girl couldn’t find it in herself to leave Marianne alone and nothing that came out of Marianne’s mouth would’ve dissuaded her. Marianne felt fond of Hilda, and Hilda made it clear that she felt the same, but Dimitri was the only one at Garreg Mach Monastery that Marianne found herself actively trying to meet with more, instead of passively letting herself be talked to. _

_ Sometimes she and Dimitri didn’t even talk. Just silently sat side by side, organizing books in the library together or feeding the horses at the stable. Nothing in Dimitri’s expression suggested he found this to be awkward or stifling, so Marianne let herself relax in these moments, found herself growing more and more comfortable in the presence of a man she would’ve never imagined being comfortable with, until it slowly dawned on her that she had fallen in love with the crown prince of Faerghus. _

_ She had contemplated leaving the Golden Deer to join the Blue Lions house after this revelation. Had a speech prepared to give to Professor Manuela to tell her why she wanted to join the house she was teaching, inspired by how bravely Lysithea went and marched into the Black Eagles’s classroom to ask Professor Byleth to join their house. During a few of their conversations, Dimitri had accidentally let slip that he was told point-blank by Felix that his old childhood friend had no intention to stay in a house run by a beast in human skin and that the encounter left him feeling bereft.  _

_ The wound was further salted in when Sylvain told him that he had finally managed to wear Professor Byleth down and he was allowed into their classroom, and when Ingrid had regretfully informed him that she had no plans to be further instructed by Professor Manuela and preferred the teachings of Professor Byleth as well, and with that, all of Dimitri’s friends from childhood had left him in favor of the Black Eagles. He also needed to comfort Annette because Mercedes had decided to transfer classes as well, and the whole ordeal was weighing on him a heavy stone. _

_ Marianne was sure that her presence wouldn’t make up for the empty hole that his three oldest friends and Mercedes had left, but even despite her dismal view of herself, she knew that he felt as much comfort in her presence as she did with his. The Blue Lions needed another healer anyways, so there was no excuse for her to stall on asking both Professor Manuela and Professor Hanneman to transfer into the Blue Lions. _

_ She had stalled, though. Stalled for reasons she could no longer remember.  _

_ Maybe she felt guilty for leaving Claude when he really did nothing wrong except ask harmless questions that she felt threatened by. Perhaps she didn’t want to imagine what Hilda’s disappointed face would look like if she told her she didn’t want to stay in the Golden Deer. Maybe logic kicked in at the last minute, reminding her that her adoptive father needed her to stay amidst future Alliance nobles, forge bonds that will be useful in the future for the sake of Edmund territory. If her adoptive father had heard of Lorenz’s attempts to ask her out to tea, he would’ve begged Marianne to stay in Golden Deer and continue this strange dance she didn’t want to participate in. _

_ The ball rolled around. She tried to avoid it as much as she could, had to leave Hilda disappointed and without a partner on the dance floor, and wandered to the Goddess Tower, where fate decided to be cruel to her and place Dimitri there in the room with her, moonlight framing his soft golden hair. _

_ He confessed that he grew tired from the festivities and the constant dancing, and Marianne had shyly laughed and confessed her surprise that the crown prince of Faerghus was an introvert like her. _

_ Dimitri’s mouth opened in shock for a moment before broadening into a wide grin. “Perhaps you’re right, Marianne.” _

_ They hadn’t danced, since neither of them could gain the courage to ask the other, but they had talked, and just the sight of Dimitri’s spirit being uplifted by the presence of someone as dreary and gloomy as her made her heart pound treacherously, made her imagine things she previously thought people like her weren’t allowed to imagine. _

_ Her adoptive father would be excited to see her alone with the heir to the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. Her classmates would be flabbergasted, and maybe Hilda would be rooting for her to go for it. _

_ She never dared to reach her hand out to Dimitri again during those peaceful days after the ball, and only lamented her decision when she was whisked back to Edmund territory after the monastery fell and never got a chance to see him before she left. _

_ But he had remembered their bond during those peaceful days before Edelgard launched her war against the Church of Seiros and had kept a regular correspondence with her as Marianne watched fire rain down from the safety of the Edmund estate. He told her of gruesome things, of the heartbreak he felt when he learned that Felix had abandoned Fraldarius territory in the middle of the night, the growing numbness inside of him when he learned Ingrid and Sylvain did the same to their families, how the smell of burning bodies and pools of blood drenching the earth was reminding him of his worst memories and that if it wasn’t for the presence of Dedue, Duke Fraldarius, and the rest of the Blue Lions who hadn’t abandoned their country, he might’ve seriously went mad. _

_ Marianne had responded to him by saying he was exaggerating. That he was the kindest, most compassionate soul she ever had the pleasure of knowing, and even though the war was perhaps bringing out the worst in everyone, she certainly knew that the worst version of him would be more likely to hurt himself than hurt others. Dimitri’s next letter had dropped the topic of conversation entirely and moved on to talk about how he was planning to negotiate with the Church in order to stave off the Imperial army. _

_ She couldn’t imagine the things he had been through. Betrayed by his fellow house leader, then betrayed by his three oldest friends, and then being forced to turn his blade against them as he fights to keep his country free from invaders. He spoke constantly of the common folk who were forced to endure the worst of the attacks, how often Dedue got hurt for his sake, and Marianne was forced to marvel all over again how many people Dimitri is willing to put before himself, even those who are complete strangers. _

_ He had no pity for Imperial soldiers, though. He kept mention of them out of his letters to her as much as possible, but sometimes, he moaned about the amount of rats that infest Faerghus and trample over the innocent, and Marianne knew he wasn’t talking about small rodents. _

_ She pored over every letter Dimitri sent her way, despite the guilt that festered in her heart every time she finished them. She’s so useless being sheltered like this, but her adoptive father wasn’t allowing her anywhere near the battlefield before he knew which side to take. _

_ Her adoptive father got his answer when Professor Byleth returned from wherever they had vanished, and declared their intent to side with the Adrestian Empire. _

_ After that, it was like the stalemate between the Kingdom and the Empire crumbled into dust. Suddenly, it was swarms of armies taking over Faerghus and Alliance territory. Count Gloucester must’ve gloated as he and his family remained out of harm’s way as he allowed red-clad soldiers into his former allies’s land. Ordelia remained safe as well, and Marianne wondered if Lysithea allowed Edelgard’s soldiers to take refuge in her own home. _

_ Her adoptive father made his decision. He announced his full support of the Adrestian Empire and suddenly, there were Imperial soldiers dressed in red flooding the Edmund estate, making negotiations with the Margrave and draping their flag against all of their doors. _

_ Marianne thought of Dimitri, back in Faerghus, ceaselessly fighting as much as he could because he would rather die than surrender the land his father had left him to protect. _

_ She thought of Hilda, a girl she spent her school days with, the one classmate she felt comfortable with assigning the name of “friend” within the confines of her mind, who she thought of sweet but incurably lazy and never aspired for anything out loud, risking her life when she said that she swore that she would never, fighting alongside Claude, even though she really had no obligation to. _

_ She thought of what it would mean if the Adrestian Empire won the war, if Edelgard succeeded in her seemingly impossible, lofty ambitions. _

_ And Marianne realized she couldn’t live in a world where the Empire won the war. _

_ It would be a world where Dimitri would either have to be exiled from Fodlan or decapitated in front of all of his subjects. It would be a world where she would have to potentially see her former classmates on the other end of the battlefield. It would be a world where she might have to see Claude, a man she truthfully never got to know very well but still thought of as dedicated and intelligent, on the chopping block if he didn’t say all the right things to the emperor. _

_ She didn’t know anything about what Edelgard fought for, but even if Lysithea appeared before her right now with a list of logical reasons ready to aim like a weapon, Marianne would never want to join the Adrestian army. _

_ Even if Lysithea was right, even if Edelgard was not the mad heretic Church loyalists whispered her to be, Marianne did not want to know what the look on Hilda’s face would be if she had to ready a spell against her. For all the warmth and gentleness her friend had shown her, surely Hilda would have limits, right? It would be ridiculous if Hilda’s fondness for her was so great, she’d even forgive Marianne for ending her life. _

_ The idea of having to look at Dimitri from the other end of a battlefield made Marianne so queasy she couldn’t even conjure the image in her head. If Hilda was the first person Marianne felt brave enough to call a friend, then Dimitri was the first person she felt brave enough to say she was head over heels in love with. The feelings she had developed during her youth had only grown stronger as the years of bloodshed and darkness stretched on. She didn’t know such a warm feeling was possible when all it took was to look out her window to feel soul crushing despair, not that she wasn’t all too familiar with the feeling already. _

_ She thought that her feelings of worthlessness as people continued to die to protect her, as her adoptive father kept her fed while others had to starve, would cause her love to flicker out like a candle. But her love for Dimitri remained, perhaps not extinguishing her feelings of self loathing entirely, but rather existing alongside it, somehow making the weight of her guilt and suffering a little lighter to bear. _

_ And Dimitri was not going to let the Adrestian Empire win the war. He was not going to let Edelgard slaughter his soldiers and his people for her lofty ideals. He would not live in a world where Edelgard won. Neither of the rulers would allow it. _

_ Hilda was willing to die defending the Leicester Alliance, to die for Claude’s ideals. Like Lysithea, the details of what Claude’s ideals actually are were never disclosed in any of her letters to Marianne, but they were just as big and lofty and they somehow inspired someone as spoiled and lazy as Hilda to become a dedicated fighter, unafraid of death if it meant Claude and the rest of their friends could find a way forward. _

_ Dimitri was willing to fight tooth and nail, grovel on the blood soaked ground beneath him, if it meant protecting Faerghus and its people. It was what he was born for, what his father entrusted to him, and he wouldn’t let anyone rip away that life purpose.  _

_ They both had such important reasons to live, so many people they were fighting for, but what did Marianne have? _

_ She didn’t know what the Empire was fighting for besides taking land that they had lost the rights to govern countless years ago, and even if she did learn, she couldn’t find it in herself to participate in the violent bloodshed that was tearing parents away from their children. She could not make another child an orphan, knowing the feeling of abandonment herself.  _

_ Her adoptive father told her to fight for Edmund territory. He had tried so hard to groom her into a successful heir, make her shrewd and calculating like him, but none of his lessons worked. He had even sent her to Garreg Mach in hopes of her miraculously transforming herself into a woman worthy of what she was destined to inherit. But Marianne did not want any of what Margrave Edmund was willing to leave behind for her. He should’ve adopted any other unfortunate orphan. The only thing that qualified her to be a proper heir was the Crest that she beared, and never in her life had she ever wanted that, either. _

_ She was alive for all the wrong reasons. Not for anything brave or selfless like Dimitri or Hilda or Claude, but because someone else saw worth in her that she did possess at all. Her adoptive father was pinning all of her hopes on her, and she wasn’t even worth any of the effort. _

_ She did not deserve to be alive, not after the countless deaths that must’ve happened because of Margrave Edmund’s choice to remain neutral five years in a continent-wide war against ruthless conquerors. _

_ After her adoptive father donated money and troops to the Adrestian Empire’s army, Edmund territory was deemed a safe zone in the Leicester Alliance. Marianne was sure that as long as the Empire’s flags hang against the doors of the Edmund estate, no one in their territory shall fall to the vicious bloodshed that infected the rest of Fodlan. _

_ As soon as agreements were settled and her adoptive father retired to bed peacefully, Marianne fled Edmund estate in the middle of the night, cloak concealing her hair and face, not even sure that she won’t get pierced by a stray arrow before she even reached her destination. _

_ But even though she craved death, knew it to be her end goal regardless of what happened on this journey, she had to see him first. She had to see Dimitri one last time before  _ _ praying for the goddess to take her to her once more. _

* * *

“What is it, Marianne? Why have you called me here?” her adoptive father asked as she sat down before him at the dining table. The Edmund castle truly was too large for a home that only had two residents and various staff members that have went in and out the doors throughout the years. The amount of lavishly decorated empty rooms would’ve made Leonie’s eyes boggle.

The room as it was right now was too large and spacious for Marianne’s tastes. It made her feel anxious, like she was commanding a whole audience instead of just one man she’s known since she was young.

“Father . . . . . . I’ve been hiding something that I should not have been hiding. Sooner or later, you would’ve found out so I believe it is better that I tell you now before it becomes too obvious.”

“Heh . . . . . it’s so strange,” her adoptive father said with an uncharacteristic huff in his voice. He glanced at his folded hands on the varnished mahogany table before looking back up at Marianne. “I thought I was the only person left alive who knew every secret you hide from others, but you’ve changed since you returned home to me. You’re almost unrecognizable, you know.”

“I’m so sorry, you know I never meant to--!” Marianne was about to finish her sentence before her adoptive father held up his hand.

“I know, Marianne, and you do not have to apologize. I’m just so thankful you didn’t return to me in a casket. I had thought that you grew frustrated with me forbidding you to step foot on the battlefield or fled Fodlan entirely once I had opened the doors of the estate. I will not ask what you did during that time, if it’s too hard for you to share.”

“Thank you, Father,” Marianne said softly. It became hard to look him in the face now that her adoptive father had expressed his small kindness. She didn’t know what she was hoping for, but she did not expect such a soft expression from him. 

Perhaps now that he knew what it felt like to lose her, the ruthless Margrave Edmund had decided he did not like the feeling of being apart from the orphan girl he had adopted to be his heir. Marianne wasn’t sure what this meant for their relationship, especially with this new revelation she must confess to him.

“I don’t want to go into detail on how it happened, or where you’ll find the father, but all I can tell you is that this was not forced upon me, nor do I intend to get rid of it, either. I want this, Father, more than anything else. This . . . . . this just means a lot to me, and I hope you’ll understand.”

“Wait a moment, did you say  _ father _ ? Marianne, don’t tell me you’re . . . . . . .”

He can’t finish the sentence, and his face quickly turned pale. His hand stretched toward her across the table, fingers trembling.

She soothed his anxieties with the calmest smile she could muster. It was hard to be a comforting daughter when her life spent with Margrave Edmund felt more like she was a tenant in his house or a student he was trying to coax out of her shell.

“I am pregnant, Father,” Marianne said with her hands in her lap, gaze as firm and forward as she could make it so. “The father is a man I met in the Kingdom after running away from home. I do not wish to share details about our relationship, but it was a brief affair that was left peacefully and without any harm to either of us. I fear I cannot introduce you to him because I do not wish for him to know. But I want the child all the same. Don’t try to convince me otherwise, because I won’t be swayed.”

“Marianne, think about what you’re saying. If you do not intend to marry or even see the father again, then why even keep the child? It is not necessary to produce heirs anymore, not in the world the emperor is building.”

“Is it strange for me to want to be a mother for my own sake and not to tie a man to me or for noble obligations?” Marianne said, perhaps bitterly. If this kind of talk is what Edelgard sought to destroy, treating children as a means to an end to continue a bloodline, then she could find herself sympathizing slightly.

“N-No, but I just . . . . . . well, I didn’t even know that you wanted to be a mother,” her adoptive father fumbled, looking nervous for the very first time Marianne had witnessed. “ . . . . . perhaps I do not know a lot about your dreams and aspirations, in general.”

His words were touched with a tinge of melancholy too shaky to be insincere.   


“That is partially my fault, Father, and I apologize for that. Before I ran away, I didn’t really have a dream to fight for, not even when my life was in danger. But I think I have one now, or at least one I can work towards. I want us to be a family, Father, not like how we were before. I want this place to a warm home when my child is born. I won’t be all alone as a parent because you’ll be there, won’t you, Father?”

“Of course, Marianne. How could I ever say no to my daughter like that?”

* * *

_ It felt unfair, strangely, to see the faces of soldiers carved through with scars when Marianne’s face remained just as unblemished as it was during her school days. She possessed not a single scar on her body that she didn’t put there herself. _

_ Meanwhile, the people of Fodlan have either been fighting their countries or tried their best to survive while everything they knew went up in flames and they didn’t know if they would live to see the next day. _

_ All these years, she was kept safe in the Edmund estate, only witnessed violence from within the confines of a gilded cage. Her father had kept her safe, sure, but her despair of being alive when others had to fall had perhaps worsened and drivened her into her lowest point. _

_ If the goddess will not take her away after she prayed to her once more, she will have no choice but to end her life by her own hands. _

_ There won’t be many people who will mourn her. Margrave Edmund adopted her for one purpose and one purpose alone, and she cannot pay him back for all of the food and shelter he had given her. Her death will drive him to find another heir, an orphan much more worthy and not a cursed wretch like her. _

_ Hilda was by all accounts an enemy to her, with her fighting against the Empire while Marianne’s adoptive father has begun to fund Emperor Edelgard’s efforts to conquer all of Fodlan. She cannot see her again because she cannot guarantee Hilda will not strike her down for betraying the Alliance. _

_ Marianne’s end goal was her own death, but she cannot bear to place the burden of taking her life away on Hilda. She will do it by her own hands, if she’s not killed on her spontaneous journey to Faerghus by either a soldier clad in red or blue. _

_ But before she did just that, she must see him one more time. He won’t kill her, or at least, she hoped he wouldn’t. He is too kind for that and while she won’t fool herself into thinking he loved her the same way she loved him, he wouldn’t raise a blade against her. _

_ She wanted to see what the war had done to him in person, maybe talk to him once more so she won’t die with any regrets. _

_ She cannot bring herself to face Hilda or Claude or any of her former Golden Deer classmates, but she wanted to see Dimitri again. _

_ And she did. _


	2. prologue (ii)

“Shh, you’re doing amazing, Marianne,” Mercedes said as she ran a hand through Marianne’s hair, her other hand gently tipping a cup full of elixir that was as green as summer grass and tasted like overripe vegetables. Her hair had brightened to pale gold in the sunlight that leaked through the window and the sight of her made Marianne weak in the knees in a way she couldn’t discern was good or bad.

Marianne had grown up being told stories that spoke of a natural glow about women who were heavy with child, a brightness that only awakened when their bodies were doing the duty of continuing the family line. Nobles throughout Fodlan liked to believe in stories about the goddess invisibly walking among her worshippers, giving her blessing to each of their pregnant wives and daughters, that that was how Crests were passed about. And when a Crestless child was born, nobles would shake their heads solemnly and proclaim that the goddess must’ve walked past the expectant mother for a good reason, assigning the blame to whatever must be inherent in the child themselves, and occasionally, their mother.

Marianne, now six months into her pregnancy, lying on her bed, feeling the most bloated and miserable she has ever felt in her entire life, would like to call every single one of those stories about a pregnant woman’s natural glow to be complete and utter garbage.

She was  _ miserable _ . Not just miserable from being deemed too unreliable for small, menial tasks and having basic needs relegated to the duty of her adoptive father’s staff and Mercedes, but just from the physical inconveniences she cannot escape from while being pregnant.

She’s seen pregnant women before, as both a child of her two minor noble parents, and as an heiress with far too many expectations shouldered on her among the Leicester Alliance’s courts. They always either seemed to be sheepish about the bump beneath their softly clasped hands or regal and poised, as if there’s nothing weighing down their posture at all.

Noble women especially needed to carry themselves with grace and silken beauty. It was said that those who mothered Crest-bearing children were blessed by the goddess to be as graceful as they were when they were young and without child. Perhaps that is the only reason Marianne felt so disgruntled and irritated every time she was forced to remember her body’s inconveniences: her child bore no Crest.

She felt a weight on her chest dissolve when she considered that as a possibility. 

Giving birth to children with Crests was once considered an unavoidable duty of noble men and women, but the Emperor declared such practices to not only be outdated, but immoral and cruel. Marianne was shocked when she first heard of Emperor Edelgard’s active stance against the Crest system that has dictated Fodlan’s ruling class for a thousand years.

She was shocked because it made all too much sense to her. She was shocked because she found herself agreeing. She was shocked to find herself internally applauding the woman she knew killed the love of her life.

She was horrible. She shouldn’t be happy living in a world where she ruled. She didn’t deserve to feel happy when she knew that  _ he _ had to die in order to make such a world happen.

Lysithea turned out to be right in the end. Perhaps if she had known what the woman had been planning in her head when she declared war on the Church of Seiros and all of Fodlan, if Marianne was allowed to step into Edelgard’s inner circle within the Black Eagles House, she would’ve fought for her, maybe even joined her army.

Crests had brought nothing good to the world, Edelgard had said blasphemously after she brought both the Church and the archbishop to their knees. As devout as Marianne believed herself to be, she found herself agreeing.

The goddess was not supposed to make mistakes, but she was kind and merciful, maybe even far too much so. Humanity should not have been trusted to bear her gifts and they had turned it into something ugly, something that has trapped and traumatized generations of children. That was the conclusion Marianne reached when she mulled over her thoughts about her devotion to the goddess despite her hatred of her cursed Crest. Maurice was given blessed blood but he turned into something cursed and paid the price for it.

The goddess was not cruel, but she put too much faith in her followers. Humanity had forsaken her and created a horrible system out of her blessings, and Rhea had taken advantage of the goddess’s kindness the most.

So when Marianne learned that the archbishop was dead, she did not weep. Many of Fodlan’s most devout did, having believed and sought salvation from her throughout their whole lives, but Marianne did not. She was glad to have that woman gone, and in another world, might have even helped Edelgard in her efforts to end her tyrannical rule. 

But that wasn’t what happened, when all was said and done. When Marianne ran away from home and took refuge in Fhirdiad, she fought against the Empire, even though her father had funded Emperor Edelgard and Faerghus was not her country.

She fought because she knew letting the Empire win would mean abandoning Dimitri to die at their hands.

She failed in the end. They all did. She couldn’t even protect Annette or Ashe. They had died in the final battle between the Black Eagle Strike Force and the Knights of Seiros, led by Rhea. They had died surrounded by the flames eating away at the bricks of Kingdom capital, while Marianne had to whisk herself away back to Edmund.

She hadn’t wanted to run away, but Dimitri begged her to live. She couldn’t deny the wishes of a dead man, especially one who spent his dying breaths ruminating in his failure to protect everything he held dear.

She had to grant him his one final wish: to live through the war and long after. Build a good life for herself, protect the last gift he gave her, and never give way to despair, even as her heart ached with grief and parts of her screamed from the unfairness of being one of the surviving few yet again.

She had to live, no matter how difficult it was.

It was so strange to do just that, leave Faerghus with a renewed vigor to live life, live it as long as possible, when she had initially thought she sought refuge there to die.

* * *

_ “Marianne? You’re not supposed to be here. Your father . . . . . . . I heard he pledged fealty to the Empire.” _

_ Dimitri’s words were low and solemn, his eyes as blue as Marianne remembered them to be, but without any of the light she cherished so deeply in her heart. _

_ “I . . . . . .” she started, tripping over herself before she even mapped out what she wanted to say. Her throat felt dry and her hands felt clammy as she stood before Dimitri, a boy she thought she knew so well back during their school days, rendered a complete stranger to her as an adult. _

_ He shot up in height, something she ought to have reckoned be impossible, and his hair was loose and matted and thick, the complete opposite to how groomed and immaculate he used to keep it. The sheer size difference between Marianne and him has never felt more emphasized until now, and now Marianne could not doubt the idea of the King of Faerghus had the power to lift her up and snap her in half like a twig. _

_ She felt a shiver skirt down her spine, but it was not fear that she felt. She was not scared of Dimitri. She could never be. _

_ Because even now, with so much time having passed without either of them seeing each other face to face, he radiated not derision or hatred, but a silent sadness that did not dare overpower the air around him, but saturate it all the same. _

_ “I found her taking refuge among the commoners in Fhirdiad,” Ashe blurted out, standing by Marianne’s side, as he was the one who found her praying to the goddess for forgiveness when she had betrayed her adoptive father among other praying refugees. He caught a flash of her blue hair from beneath her cloak’s hood and sought her out from within the crowd. _

_ She had been lucky to have caught his attention. She probably wouldn’t have had a chance to see the king otherwise. _

_ “I’m so happy you’re alive, Marianne,” Ashe said to her with a gentle smile. “I don’t know where a lot of my old friends from the Officer’s Academy are, besides His Majesty, Annette, and Dedue.” _

_ “You consider us friends?” Marianne said with her eyes wide, taken aback. _

_ “Of course!” Ashe smiled, apparently surprised by her alarm. “I’m sad that we didn’t get to talk much back at Garreg Mach, but the memories I have of you are all pleasant ones, so I have no reason to dislike you at all!” _

_ “Even that time you thought I was a ghost?” _

_ “Oh . . . . . . that?” Ashe sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. “Ugh, I’m still sorry for that! I mean, yes, you had scared me, but I must’ve made a horrible first impression!” _

_ “Oh no, it’s fine,” Marianne frantically shook her head as she apologized. “It was five years ago, Ashe. It would be ridiculous for me to hold a grudge.” _

_ “I’m surprised either of you could remember such a trivial event, if it had happened five years ago,” Dimitri huffed, sending both Ashe and Marianne into a fright as they had temporarily forgotten the king still stood there with them.  _

_ Marianne’s cheeks burned. How ridiculous for her to forget his presence. His shadow towered over both hers and Ashe’s. Making simple eye contact made her throat feel dry, but not out of fear or anything of the sort. It was strange. _

_ “Well, Your Majesty, if I may be so bold,” Ashe said, looking up at Dimitri like he wasn’t his king, a king that couldn’t easily snap him in half at that. “Perhaps I remember because it was such a pleasant memory, even if it was a little embarrassing. For five years, I’ve seen things I wish I hadn’t, so we often cling to the few good memories we have left in order to keep fighting. I like to remember our days back at Garreg Mach, before we were all forced to take up arms against each other.” _

_ “I can’t argue against that, or else I would be a hypocrite,” Dimitri sighed, still looking pensive. _

_ Ashe smiled a little, before leaning in to whisper into Marianne’s ear. “I actually had a bit of a small crush on you back when we were classmates. I think His Majesty felt the same way about you, if Sylvain was to be believed.” _

_ “W-W-What?” Marianne yelped, loud enough that it caused Dimitri to turn and pierce his gaze at her. A spark skirted up her spine at the sight of his frost-colored eyes and once again, it was not fear that motivated that reaction. _

_ Ashe burst out laughing. “You were popular, Marianne, much more so you think. Ferdinand and Lorenz apparently fancied you a little too, truth be told. Lorenz was probably a little more obvious about it in hindsight.” _

_ “That’s . . . . . .” Marianne started, but her face felt so red that it felt like she was running a fever. She supposed a small part of her felt flattered and pleased, but mostly felt shock and disbelief. _

_ “I’m sure then, that Lorenz and Ferdinand would be rather displeased to see you here in Faerghus, instead of joining the emperor’s army like they have. Unless, of course, they have forgotten their cherished memories and instead have decided they can kill you without batting an eye,” Dimitri said almost casually, like he wasn’t aware of how cruel he phrased his words. _

_ “Your Majesty . . . . . .” Ashe said indignantly, and he opened his mouth to perhaps scold him further, but Marianne interrupted him with a hand to his shoulder. _

_ “It’s fine. I know the consequences of my choices. I can’t say I believe you when you say Ferdinand and Lorenz both harbored feelings for me when I don’t think I was ever friends with them in the first place, let alone a good one. Lorenz only sent me one letter after the monastery fell, and that was to tell me to advise my adoptive father to pledge fealty to the Empire, in order to protect the people of Edmund.” _

_ “Perhaps that’s what you should’ve done,” Dimitri intoned. _

_ “What’s gotten into you, Your Majesty? I thought you would be happy to see Marianne again!” Ashe cried, scowling. It spoke bounds about what kind of a king Dimitri was that Ashe, a former commoner, was allowed to speak to him like this. _

_ “I’m glad that she’s alive, but she’s foolish to have come here,” was all that Dimitri said to explain himself, and he turned his back to them in an attempt to walk away, but was stopped by Marianne’s grip on his elbow. _

_ Even when his hair placed a shadow over half his face and his bent form towering over her, Marianne still couldn’t find herself afraid of the King of Faerghus. _

_ “I came here in order to speak to you, Dimitri,” she said, and she almost didn’t recognize the voice that came out of her mouth behind gritted teeth. “Please don’t make my journey worthless by pushing me away.” _

* * *

It was awkward, frankly, to watch the eloquent and silver-tongued Margrave Edmund flit about awkwardly to attend to his adoptive daughter’s needs as she grew more and more cumbersomely pregnant. Marianne knew him to be a skilled orator and a ruthless politician, but she never knew him to be a warm man, especially not in regards to children.

Watching him fret about the colors to paint his grandchild’s future room was almost amusing, but it mostly made pity bloom in Marianne’s heart.

“It’s shameful of me to admit, but I don’t think I have much knowledge in regards to taking care of newborns,” her adoptive father said with a pinched, pained expression, like it hurt him to find himself clueless.

“Neither do I, unfortunately, unless I’m allowed to count newborn foals and birds,” Marianne replied with a nervous laugh. “I’ve taken care of horses while they were giving birth but I don’t think I can remember an instance in my life where I even got to hold a human baby in my arms.”

A beat passed before Marianne and her adoptive father looked at one another and at the exact same time, they blurted out, “Thank the goddess Mercedes is here.”

After Marianne gave her adoptive father the news, Mercedes started to visit the Edmund estate almost daily, either to impart advice for Marianne on how to keep the bothersome symptoms of pregnancy manageable or to help the staff rearrange the manor to make it ready for the new baby.

She possessed all of the maternal instinct that Marianne seemed to lack, at least for human children, and when Marianne’s moods dipped low, made worse from the pregnancy, she couldn’t help but feel jealous of her for it.

Marianne of course wanted her child. She wanted it more than anything, and it was perhaps the one thing that carried her through the dismal days when she realized she had survived yet another horrible tragedy while her loved ones disappeared. The first time, it was just her parents, but the war was much bigger than any grief Marianne had previously experienced, and this time, she had not only returned to House Edmund a widow, but to letters informing her that Hilda and Ignatz had died in Derdriu defending Claude and Lorenz had died defending House Gloucester before Professor Byleth made their miraculous return from the dead. 

For a short while, Marianne believed Claude to be dead too, but then the news spread that the heir to House Riegan had willingly entrusted Derdriu to Emperor Edelgard and Professor Byleth after falling in defeat to their forces. He had then vanished with a foreign army and was last seen again sailing across the sea towards Almyra.

Marianne had learned of Hilda’s death specifically through a letter from her older brother. Holst’s grief was palpable from his shaky handwriting alone and he told her that his little sister spoke endlessly about her best friend from Garreg Mach and worried that Marianne had ran away from Fodlan entirely when the news broke out that Margrave Edmund’s adoptive daughter fled home after he declared fealty to the Empire.

In the envelope embellished with the House Goneril’s Crest, Holst had slipped in a beautiful necklace that bore a gemstone that matched Marianne’s hair, telling her that Hilda had spent her free time making jewelry she planned to give to her friends after the war was won. He distinctly remembered Hilda saving this particular necklace for her good friend Marianne, hoping that she’ll smile upon receiving it, because Marianne’s smiles were so few and far between, but they were beautiful regardless of their frequency.

Marianne did indeed smile upon receiving the necklace. She had also cried so hard that her eyes remained red afterwards for hours.

If she wasn’t going to soon give birth, she would be tearing herself into pieces over how disgraceful it was that her friends had died while she lived. She had sworn so long ago after her parents vanished that she would never allow such a thing to happen again. But she had to take care of herself now, because it’s not just her anymore. She was soon to be a mother, and everything Marianne did now was going to affect her child. She can’t hurt herself, because such an act would be selfish when she was bearing life within her.

She wondered if she was a bad mother for feeling the impulse to hurt herself regardless.

But even if she was, she hoped Mercedes’s constant presence would eventually have her inheriting some of the blonde woman’s natural maternal aura. Mercedes had reassured her constantly that Marianne would be a great mother, reminding her of the times she helped horses back at the monastery give birth and was so gentle returning lost chicks back to their nest before their mother returned with food.

Marianne was tempted to correct Mercedes in that all of these examples, Marianne only dealt with animals, never small children and babies, and that she was so woefully inept with people her own age, only the goddess will know how much of a disaster she’ll be with a newborn who will constantly have to rely upon her for sustenance and basic survival.

But she cannot let herself give way to negativity, or else she’ll never pick herself back up again. Her bouts of depression only got worse as the countdown to her child’s birth progressed, and even though Mercedes knew many good recipes for medicines that combat against such moods, Marianne needed to develop good mental fortitude because she will have to be someone reliable in the near future. Someone who is worthy of being looked up to by someone small and impressionable, who will never know just how wonderful a man their father was and will live in a world that hopefully will never know the violence Marianne had to witness.

She could never dream of abandoning her child, not when she knew the pain of being an orphan all too well, so she can’t run away from this. She never particularly dreamed of being a mother before learning she was pregnant, but she was determined to be a good one to make up for the burning absence of a father her child will surely feel when they get older.

* * *

_ “You have no obligation to be here. You are not of Faerghus, and all of the family you have left is elsewhere, bending at the knee for my greatest enemy. I actually prepared myself for the possibility of having to raise Areadbhar against you on a battlefield,” Dimitri spoke once he and Marianne were alone.  _

_ Soldiers and civilians alike gawked at the sight of Marianne dragging their king away by the arm. Indeed, Marianne herself flushed inwardly at her boldness in ordering around the current monarch of a country she’s seeking refuge in, but she needed to speak to Dimitri. It was her entire purpose in coming here, after all. _

_ “And how was it, preparing yourself for the possibility of killing me?” Marianne did not mean to be sharp with her words, but it was like they armed themselves with barbed wire the moment they left her mouth. _

_ She was expecting a nonchalant grunt or a click of teeth in response but Dimitri’s eyes suddenly bloomed with sorrow as he looked down at Marianne. _

_ “I found myself utterly weak in the knees at the idea of harming you, let alone raising a blade against you,” he said. There was a bit of a huff in his voice that suggested he was just as surprised by this revelation as Marianne was. “I thought about it further, and I realized I couldn’t bring myself to command another one of my soldiers to kill you either, not even if you threatened my life. Or even watch someone else snuff out your light; I ended up having foolish fantasies of throwing myself in harm’s way to protect you from an attack readied by my own army!” _

_ Dimitri shook his head and a broken laugh escaped his throat. A beat later, he said, “I am a horrible king for that. House Edmund is now an enemy to me, just like everyone else who bent their knee for the wicked emperor. I should be overjoyed that I did not have to make a fool of myself before you on a battlefield, but I’m more puzzled than anything.” He made an accusing gesture. “You have nothing to fight for here in Faerghus. I do not know if you love your adoptive father, but surely you do not want to disobey the man who has poured so much effort into taking you in and raising you in place of your parents. Perhaps you loathe him? I do not get along with my uncle, so I can relate if that is indeed true.” _

_ Marianne stood firm. “This has nothing to do with my adoptive father. In fact, I don’t wish any harm to fall upon him. I don’t even intend to fight in this war, so I do not worry about the idea of having to arm myself against him.” _

_ “Then why, Marianne? If you do not intend to fight in this war, you have the option to leave Fodlan entirely. So many common folk who have lost their homes already plan on doing so, why not you?” _

_ “Because . . . . . . . .” the words began to clump together at the back of her throat as Marianne tried to force them out. She clenched at the fabric of her dress, tight enough that her knuckles were white. _

_ It was illogical for her to be here. Why even see Dimitri at all, when she couldn’t bring herself to see Hilda or Ignatz or any other of classmates from Golden Deer? It did not require the arduous journey she was forced to endure to arrive in Faerghus to see them, either. She told herself that it was because she couldn’t trust Hilda to not kill her on sight, but that was just an excuse. She had to see Dimitri, specifically, no one else, and it was because of one reason and one reason alone. _

_ “Marianne? Are you okay?” _

_ He was the only one she knew who understood her feelings. He knew what it was like to be filled with despair of being alive, of feeling like you don’t deserve the breath in your lungs or the heartbeat in your chest. She couldn’t confess her despair to Hilda because she was never able to even come close to such intimate topics with her throughout their friendship, and she couldn’t tell such things to her adoptive father, lest he refuse to let her be alone for any waking moment in fear that she’ll hurt herself when she left his sight. _

_ She wanted to die. Goddess, she knew she wanted to the moment she realized how much misfortune was wrought from her presence alone, how much it could hurt others, how it already drove her parents away. But even though she thought she now had the resolve to take her life by her own hands, she wanted to see Dimitri, even though seeing him once more would derail her whole plan because of her own stupid emotions. _

_ “Marianne! Are you listening to me? You look so pale, I--” _

_ Seeing Dimitri again would derail her plans on dying because she now that she saw him once more, she can’t bring herself to take her own life. Dimitri had just confessed to her he loathed the idea of having to kill her. She was valuable to him, for reasons she cannot fathom and even when he’s massive and possessed an almost permanent glower, she wasn’t afraid of him, because she loved him, she loved him so dearly it made her feel like she would have to rend her chest open to be rid of the feeling. She’s grown so used to the fact that she was in love with him that it felt printed on her skin, embedded in her very soul. _

_ “Marianne, please answer me!” _

_ She came here because she  _ knew _ she wouldn’t be able to kill herself if she saw him again, she came here in the hopes that she could finally share the burden of her misery, to not have to swallow it all up inside constantly, to beg him if he knew a way to alleviate her guilt and her suffering, to see if he could give her a reason to live, since he had felt all of her feelings before and yet still stood tall as a newly crowned king, that he must knew the answer she didn’t even know she wanted. _

_ She wanted to live. She wanted to find a reason to live, a purpose she could dedicate herself to. She wanted to see him again in order to remind herself of all the reasons to not take her life, because she  _ loved _ him fiercely, loved him to an almost frightening degree and knew she wouldn’t be able to do it she were forced to remind herself of all the secret feelings she harbored for him. _

_ “ _ Marianne! _ ” _

_ Marianne was startled out of her thoughts, halted the swirling currents within her head, to find herself crying. _

_ “Marianne,” Dimitri repeated her name once more, but his voice was soft now, so strange contrasted to his intimidating form, and he reached a gauntleted hand out in an attempt to wipe her tears, only to pull back at the sight of the sharp points his hands possessed. He offered her a corner of his cape instead. _

_ “You had turned deathly white and I feared you were going to fall ill on me,” Dimitri admonished, but his words trembled around the edges. _

_ “Dimitri . . . . . . .” Marianne’s voice warbled out before her passive tears slicking down her cheeks gave out to hoarse, violent sobs. Her face fell into her hands as she dropped to her knees, no longer able to bear the weight of her sorrow. _

_ Dimitri immediately dropped to his knees as well, forgetting how large his hands were compared to hers and how weighty his gauntlets were designed to cup Marianne’s face in his palms. His massive size and the cold metal of his gloves made him perhaps the least comforting soothsayer in Fodlan, and yet, Marianne couldn’t help but reach out for him, egg on his close embrace despite her broken tears. _

_ “I can’t do it anymore, I don’t understand why I’m still here, I don’t understand why I should even  _ want _ to be here,” Marianne babbled out in a barely comprehensible stream of words. “I’m so sick of it all that I don’t even want to wait for the goddess to take me to her. I want to  _ die _ , Dimitri! I came here so I could see you one more time before I could take my life by my own hands, before someone else puts me out of my misery!” _

_ She couldn’t see Dimitri’s face from behind her hands but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him directly with clear eyes. Oh, he must be so disgusted with her, so burdened by her forcing him to comfort her like this, she shouldn’t have ever come here, she should’ve just walked straight in the ports of Edmund and let no one find her body so they won’t ever know the shameful, cowardly way she died, she should’ve-- _

_ “Marianne,” Dimitri said, alarmingly soft, holding her face between his hands. It took her awhile to realize he had stripped off his gauntlets while she wrecked herself crying, leaving his hands bare as he swiped at her tears.  _

_ His hands were scarred and burnt in a way that Marianne had never seen before. They looked as if Dimitri had made physical touch with a meltingly hot surface long ago, and Marianne’s stomach roiled when she realized she had never seen Dimitri without his hands covered in any of her memories with him. _

_ She forced him to bear that part of himself to her, and she did nothing to deserve such intimacy, other than make a fool of herself in front of him. _

_ “Your hands, they’re--” _

_ “They’ve been like this for a very long time,” Dimitri interrupted her. He sounded as if he was forcing his voice to be soft like it was during their school days. It didn't make him feel insincere, strangely, more like he’s simply not used to comforting others and is stumbling his way through this. “I very much loathe looking at them but Dedue has reassured me constantly that they’re nothing to be ashamed of. He’s the only one who has seen me bare my hands, though.” _

_ “Don’t be ashamed of your scars,” Marianne blurted out, even though her voice was still hoarse from her sobs. “In fact, you shouldn’t have removed your gloves for my sake. I’m not worth that vulnerability.” _

_ “I might be ashamed of my scars but what parts of yourself you have bared before me greatly outweighs what I have bared before you,” Dimitri said firmly, shaking his head. “I fear I have never done this before . . . . . please forgive me. It is me doing you a great injustice. You have done nothing wrong. I will not blame you if you continue to shed your tears, I will only blame myself for not being better at drying them.” _

_ “When will you stop blaming yourself for things beyond your control?” Marianne chuckled bitterly. Her throat burned and her eyes surely must be rimmed red at this point. _

_ “I could ask the same of you,” Dimitri replied, and there was almost something akin to amusement in his voice. It faded away quickly, and his expression turned grim once more. “Marianne . . . . . . please don’t give up on your precious life.” _

_ “I find nothing harder than to wake up in the morning and count all the people that must’ve fallen because of me,” Marianne said softly, ashamed of herself. How could she be so careless about the life the goddess had blessed her with? How could she not be like everyone else and love the gift of living? _

_ “I cannot diminish your struggles because I am the exact same, I fear,” Dimitri said sadly. “In fact, I am ashamed to admit that I know no calming words to convince you to look forward to the next day. You should not have worked so hard to come here just to see me.” _

_ “I can’t go to anyone else but you,” Marianne confessed, and for a moment, she feared her mouth will lead on without her mind to halt it and she’ll confess every secret feeling she has for him that she held so dear to her heart. “You are the only one who won’t tell me to cheer up, to force myself to smile. I don’t want to hear any words like that. Can’t you see, Dimitri? You’re different. You’ve always been.” _

_ The skin on Dimitri’s hand was rough and unpleasant to the touch, but she found his fingers running through her hair comforting all the same. _

_ “Marianne, I am not the man you knew me to be back when we were classmates,” Dimitri admitted, eyes darting away. “I am . . . . . what keeps me waking up every morning is anger. Anger that this war inflicts the most damage on the innocent, that the Empire so arrogantly believes that the Kingdom did not fight and win their own independence so long ago but was manipulated into it instead. Anger that this was all launched by a woman I thought was my si--thought was my friend. I fear I cannot call myself a good man any longer, but I must restrain myself, because I have people I need to make myself strong for, people who are relying on me.” _

_ He paused, before lifting Marianne’s chin up to make eye contact with her. Marianne’s eyes have cleared up somewhat, and she can now see all the sharp angles Dimitri’s face has grown into. She felt flushed warm at the feeling of his hands on her face, even if his skin was cracked through with old scars that made his hands feel like rough bark. _

_ She found the feeling comforting. _

_ Dimitri’s gaze laced itself with steel as he spoke. “I fear I do not know what the end-all, be-all answer to how to keep on living despite your burdens, but I do know that when I think about the people who won’t be able to carry on without their king, my friends who all rely on me to help them see this war through to the end, I know I cannot give up, not now, not ever. You need to know that I cannot carry on if you ever died, because you are extremely precious to me. I was only angered by your presence in the Kingdom because I feared you would be hurt if you remained here. But you are free to do as you wish, as long as you do not harm yourself or give up on life entirely. I swear to you, by the goddess, by the crown of Faerghus, by my own  _ life _ , I shall never let any harm fall your way.” _

_ His next words were almost pressed into her skin like a prayer, like a secret only the two of them will ever know. _

_ “Please do not give on yourself, Marianne. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if we lost you.” _

_ This man was the King of Faerghus, a man colluding with the Church to fight back against a country trying to conquer the land of his forefathers, a man who possessed enough strength to kill Marianne without any effort on his part, a man who has seen far more horrendous things than she could ever say. _

_ And this man has just told her that he believed in her, that he saw value in her, that he did not want her to give up on herself. _

_ It was hard to hold herself back, so she let it loose. She smiled, the corners of her lips lifting up, somewhat weak, but they lifted up their own accord, not because of someone else’s suggestion or command. _

_ She remembered doing that often when she was alone with Dimitri, back when they were at the Officer’s Academy. _

_ “Okay then, Dimitri,” she said, softly but surely. “I won’t. I’ll stay here. I’ll fight for your cause. I’ll fight to give myself a reason to live.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to end on a completely different note, but I got frustrated by how long it has been since the last update, so I decided to cut the chapter I had in half and worry about the rest later, haha.
> 
> Please comment if you can, it keeps me going in these trying times.


	3. prologue (iii)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for an implied suicide attempt and general descriptions of depression and suicidal thoughts, as well as implied sexual content at the very end.

As the days and months went by, approaching closer and closer to when the baby was due, Marianne only found herself to be more and more frustrated with her body, yearning desperately for the day it will belong to her and only her again and she won’t have to second guess every action she took in fear of hurting another life.

Pregnant women experiencing mood swings were nothing new, but when Marianne’s moods dipped low, she felt lows that she feared she would never be able to lift herself out of.

She often woke up in the morning, dazedly wondering why was she doing this, why did she think this was a good idea, what gave her the audacity to believe she would be a good parent when her own had vanished and she was powerless to stop it? Her child was destined to be fatherless, destined to be mothered by a woman with a cursed nature, another link in the bloodline that should’ve been eliminated long ago.

Did she only want to be a mother because of her own guilt? Did she only decide to bear her pregnancy because she was obligated to? Children should never be born for such a purpose.

Would she have wanted the baby as fervently if Dimitri never died?

Her mind during these agonizing moments were pitch black, but like how rain clouds eventually parted to reveal slivers of daylight, these moods did not always keep their grip on her iron tight, even though their return was inevitable. Marianne could only comfort herself knowing that their leave was inevitable as well.

But it wasn’t all hopeless. When Marianne’s moods dipped low, she wasn’t powerless to the blackness of her mind. She could always write to Mercedes, invite her over, and have a tea party. The woman made sweets that Marianne could never hope to find anything similar in taste to; they were that delicious. 

The smell of lavender tea wafting in the air startled memories of Professor Byleth out of nowhere, how they invited her to tea on her birthday despite her not telling anyone that the day was special, not even Hilda, and engaged her in pleasant conversation, even though she also remembered for a brief spell, Professor Byleth also tilted their head this way and that to observe different angles of her face as she sipped her tea. It was . . . . . . strange, to say the least. 

“Are you doing okay, Marianne?” Mercedes asked as she arranged frosted pastries in a pattern on one of her adoptive father’s most expensive plates. “Are you feeling unwell? Do I need to use some healing magic to soothe any nausea?”

“No, no, I just needed some company,” Marianne quickly soothed the other woman’s concerns. She blew gently on her tea before taking a sip. “I think one the things I learned during the years cooped up in the estate is that loneliness is perhaps the most damaging thing to a person.”

“Ah yes, I understand the sentiment,” Mercedes replied, smiling. “You’re such a brave person for what you’re doing right now, Marianne, but please remember you’re not alone. I’ll always be here for you when you need me.”

“You’re so kind, Mercedes,” Marianne said softly. “You do so many things for me even though you’re not obligated to. If it wasn’t for you, I would probably be dead.”

And Marianne was not exaggerating when she said that. If it wasn’t for Mercedes encountering her after that devastating day when the flags of Adrestia waved from the Tailtean Plains, Marianne might’ve tried to set herself drifting away into the sea once more.

Marianne’s hands started to shake as she remembered. Truly, loneliness was the worst sort of punishment one can inflict upon her. If it wasn’t for the presence of others, it seemed as if Marianne’s first instinct was to harm herself, to think herself disgusting and unworthy of life. It was loneliness that brought back voices in her head telling her to throw her life away for the sake of others, and it was the presence of her friends and her adoptive father whom she hoped she could truly call family one day that reminded her that the voices were nothing more than illusions, false phantoms.

It was one of the many things she and Dimitri had in common.

“I couldn’t leave you there, not after what Annie told me,” Mercedes replied, and the mention of her long dead friend brought back a soft mourning in the older woman’s eyes. “Truthfully, I didn’t think the two of us would ever speak again. I wasn’t there when the Black Eagle Strike Force fought in the Tailtean Plains--the professor had told me to sit that battle out--but there was no way Annie would’ve known that. I believe I must’ve missed my chance to see her again when I decided to take my leave to find you instead of continue the march to Fhirdiad.”

Marianne knew Mercedes’s absence in the battle that killed the love of her life all too well. In fact, it was the one of the first things Mercedes told her when the older woman found Marianne on her trek back to Edmund.

_I wasn't there when Dimitri died,_ she had said. _I swear I didn't kill him or helped any of my friends kill him. So please put the dagger down, it's hard to speak like this._

Marianne put the cup of tea down on the table and placed her hands on her lap, where her fists began to clutch at her dress.

“You saved me, even though I almost killed you upon seeing you. You helped me get back to my adoptive father, even though during that time, we were supposed to be enemies. You helped a woman get back to safety knowing she was carrying the child of a man your emperor killed, defying orders and risking your life to do so. Why?”

Mercedes’s smile predictably didn’t shift in its shape. “To clarify a few things, Marianne, I wasn’t going to get punished for leaving the Black Eagle Strike Force. I know you probably wouldn’t care to hear it, and you have every right to hate her, but Edelgard wasn’t holding us hostage, despite what the Church would have you believe. We came to pledge ourselves to the Empire’s cause by our own volition, and she told us we were allowed to leave at any point.”

Marianne remembered meeting Lord Rodrigue, Margrave Gautier, and Count Galatea, men who had all lost their children to the Empire. Count Galatea had fervently believed his daughter must’ve been brainwashed, led astray by the dastardly wicked heretics that plagued the Adrestian Empire, perhaps even corrupted by the emperor herself. He sent letter after letter to his estranged daughter, getting nothing in return for his efforts, and only saw such a thing as more proof that the Empire is holding his beloved child hostage and is throwing away his missives before it could reach Ingrid’s hands.

Lord Rodrigue and Margrave Gautier, on the hands, clung to no such delusions. Margrave Gautier only sighed and readied his armies to fight his own son as it was an inconvenience, mourning more the loss of his family’s Hero’s Relic than the fact that his only son had turned his back on both him and their country. Lord Rodrigue was more somber about Felix’s betrayal, but seemed to treat the occurrence as an inevitability, shouldered the blame himself instead of pinning it all on the Empire, and swore to Dimitri that he would take care of his unruly son himself.

Dimitri did not take too kindly to hearing Felix be treated as an obstacle and an inconvenience by his own father. But he did not show his displeasure in front of Lord Rodrigue. Instead, he expressed his displeasure by throwing around pieces of furniture in the privacy of his own room, smashing them to unrecognizable splinters, not stopping until Marianne and Dedue found him with violently shaking hands and murmuring to invisible phantoms.

“Well, then why did you go out of your way to save me? I was but a stranger to you at the academy. We only ever saw each other during chapel services.”

“It’s true that I didn’t know you very well back then, but when Annie described your situation to me in a letter she secretly sent after Dimitri’s death, I couldn’t leave you well enough alone,” Mercedes said with sadness weighing down the upturned corners of her mouth. “You had just lost the father of your child, and were in too precarious of a position to remain in Fhirdiad. You alone had to go back home and there was a possibility you could’ve been attacked by soldiers or bandits. Annie and Ashe had to stay to fight, but Annie was still worried about you. Who knew she still had a bit of belief left in her terrible best friend to save you?”

Marianne bit her lip. Annette was such a kind soul. So cheerful and upbeat, even tolerated Marianne’s general gloomy presence. She and Mercedes were once attached to the hip before Mercedes transferred to the Black Eagles. Marianne had heard of friends drifting apart from one another, but drifting to opposite ends of a battlefield was the most cruel and tragic thing she could think of.

(Mercedes wasn’t present at the Battle of the Tailtean Plains, but she knew Ingrid, Sylvain, and Felix were. The inside of her mouth grew bitter thinking of them, thinking of how many tears Dimitri had shed thinking of the possibility of harming them while they probably had no regrets if they allowed Edelgard to cut off his head).

“Did you do it to make it up to her, perhaps? It was the last thing she asked of you, after all,” Marianne asked.

“I did it because I couldn’t let Annie down after betraying her the way I did,” Mercedes answered. “I did it because I knew if I continued on the march to Fhirdiad, I would have to meet her there, and I was too cowardly to do such a thing. The professor had allowed me to sit out on the Battle at Tailtean, so I figured there would be no protests if I left. And I’m glad I did end up leaving, because then you would’ve died had I not arrived there in the nick of time.”

It was true. Marianne had left Faerghus desperately clinging onto this new sense of purpose that had been given to her, but the sight of red flags waving from the place where her beloved died had been so devastating that she nearly lapsed back into the empty yearning for death that had ruled most of her life.

It seemed as if no matter how many purposes in life she is given, Marianne will always have to grapple with that pitch dark blackness that comes and goes, drawing her closer to the desire to end it all. She will have to fight against that blackness for the rest of her life, should she choose to live it.

Can that kind of person be a good mother? Can that kind of person be a good role model for an impressionable child?

Marianne has no choice but to leave it all up to fate.

“I wonder if he were here to see me now, would he hate me for not killing you after you saved my life?” Marianne whispered to herself. “He had such a deep heart, deep enough to shed tears for complete strangers, but he hated those who fought for the Empire. Called them rats in his worst moments, said they lived to trample the weak and force their ideals onto others. He hated Edelgard the most, and had no kind words to say about her. How would he feel knowing that I’m having tea with one of the people who pledged to fight for her cause?”

Once it had all rushed out of her mouth, Marianne knew she shouldn’t have said such a thing. She treasured the friendship she had developed with Mercedes, found herself extremely fond of her for all that she has done without asking for anything in return, and yet Marianne had the audacity to bring up what divided them. Awoken Dimitri’s ghost and placed them in the room with them, hovering in the dead, silent air.

Mercedes spoke once more, and Marianne was surprised to hear no bitterness laced in her voice.

“I won’t blame Dimitri for thinking of us like that, even if his oldest friends were amongst us,” she said matter of factly. “In fact, it’s possible he hated Sylvain, Ingrid, and Felix the most. He probably didn’t have kind words to spare for me either.”

“No, actually,” Marianne was shocked to hear the words tumble forth. “I believed he tried to, desperately, but in the end, his heart was too soft.” She laughed bitterly at that. “I always keep saying that, but I mean no ill towards when I say such a thing. It’s what I loved about him most: how deeply his compassion ran for others. Unfortunately, I think his love and compassion for others lends him to feel hatred for those he saw as oppressors just as deeply. And I fear he felt nothing at all towards himself, no matter how much I told him I loved him.”

“I know that struggle all too well,” Mercedes nodded. “Loving someone who refuses to love themselves.”

“Your brother, correct?” Marianne asked nervously.

“Yes,” Mercedes answered. “Emile has committed many atrocities in his life, many of which I still don’t know. He fought in the name of the emperor’s cause, but really, all he was out for was blood to wet his blade to feed his Death Knight persona. That was how he coped with the first time he killed, which happened at a time far too early in his life and it was for my sake, on top of that.”

Mercedes paused to take a sip of tea before continuing.

“And so I joined the emperor’s cause as well because it was my responsibility as his older sister. Should he be condemned for his sins by the goddess, I’ll tumble down into the fires of Ailell with him. It’s the least I can do to make up for leaving him to such a cruel fate. Had it not been for me, he wouldn’t have ever known the life of a murderer, would never have seen his hands coated red. Returning to the Empire was almost like returning home for me, at least because I was able to return to my brother. And I was able to cut ties with my awful adoptive father, too. I wonder if that man has fled Fodlan entirely, or even died. I guess I’ll never know, and I don’t particularly care to find out.”

“You cannot possibly believe your brother became a cruel man all because of you, right? That doesn’t make any sense!” Marianne cried.

“Only because you don’t know half of what happened in the past with my brother and House Bartels,” Mercedes said calmly, with an unsettlingly bright smile. “Perhaps I’ll tell you one day. But for now, all you need to know is that I don’t regret leaving the Kingdom to return to my brother. I feel more loyalty to him than I’ll ever do for the crown, though I deeply wish Dimitri had been spared his fate. He was a good man for what I knew of him, but unfortunately, war is war, and there was no way he was going to bend his knee to Edelgard.”

“He was never going to surrender what he believed was land fought tooth and nail for by his ancestors,” Marianne said sadly. “I understand he was willing to die for it, but I deeply wish he didn’t. I wish he didn’t care to be a king at all, if only so the both of us could leave Faerghus behind to live with my adoptive father. I wish he didn’t care so much for justice for the dead, because in the end, the pursuit of that justice just led him to join them.”

“It might sound wrong, considering what I did, but I do pray Dimitri’s soul is at rest. I might believe in Edelgard’s vision of the future more than his, but how his life ended, at least how Sylvain described it to me in a letter, was far too cruel. He didn’t deserve such a fate.”

“If Edelgard fell instead in that decisive battle, and Dimitri won instead, would you have been content with that?”

“My brother would probably be executed for being one of her accomplices in gaining so much power or go into hiding in order to escape such authorities,” Mercedes mused. “And not everything I’ve done in the war was for Emile’s sake. I truly did believe the Church needed to be reformed, and Edelgard wasn’t against the concept of faith, so I didn’t fully turn my back on the goddess in the end, only the archbishop and her followers. And I knew the Crest system was a cruel one, and I did not want generations of children to suffer being used by greedy men like my stepfather and adopted father did to me and my brother. Dimitri chose what he chose, and he was backed by the Church of Seiros the same way Edelgard was backed by corrupt Adrestian nobles and other shadowy men that she hated. Perhaps Dimitri could’ve wanted to enforce the same reforms as Edelgard did, but no matter what, his winning would mean Rhea and the Church of Seiros remain in power. After all that we have learned about them and their selfish, wicked deeds, how could I remain happy in a world they’re still in power?”

“Yes,” Marianne began. “This might sound cruel, but I’m happy that the archbishop fell in Fhirdiad. Even if Emperor Edelgard fell, are we supposed to accept salvation from a woman who revealed herself to be inhuman? How much has she concealed from us? How were the people of Fodlan supposed to continue on the broken world that the Church perpetuated? Dimitri only sided with her because she promised to protect Faerghus and she ended up burning down the capital after she left him to die! I wish he didn’t have any royal obligations. I wish he would have ran away with me. I wish the archbishop never approached him. I would be so much happier with the Church’s defeat if the man I loved didn’t have to _die for it_ !”

She’s shaking. She’s convulsing all over. She can feel the tears coming. Mercedes is already getting up from her seat to comfort her. Marianne can already smell her gently perfumed hair.

“I’m so awful. I know the Kingdom meant a lot to him, as well as the people in it. I know that. But part of me still wishes that he was willing to abandon all of that just so he could be here for the birth of our child. Willing to abandon it all for _me._ Can you believe that?”

“We want many people back. That’s the very nature of grief. I wish Annie could come back so I could beg for her forgiveness in person. I think she stayed to fight for the Kingdom because that’s what she believed was right. And I knew that she worked very hard, put herself through so much struggle to reunite with her father again. Asking her to run away to the Empire with me would mean to ask her to abandon the man she worked so hard to reunite with. But part of me is selfish and wished Annie stopped trying so hard to please a man she is only bonded to in blood and be satisfied with being a part of _my_ family instead. I know my mother would’ve welcomed her with open arms. I wanted her to meet Emile. I wanted her to be my sister and learn to be happy without her father’s approval.

“But I also think Annie would always feel miserable knowing she had given up on her father, even if _I_ think giving up on him would be for the better. I can’t ask her to do that for me. In the end, she’s her own person and she made her choices, just like I’ve made mine.”

Marianne shuddered. Her voice felt so hoarse, so heavy with her sobs. “Asking Dimitri to give up being king would mean telling him to give up a part of himself, that part of himself that weeps for strangers, that part of himself that wants to do much for others, he would spread himself far too thin and push himself to the point of breaking. I think he would always be miserable if he surrendered to the Empire, even if it meant he would live just like Claude ended up living.”

Briefly, her mouth flooded with bitterness thinking of how Claude escaped Fodlan with his life while Dimitri died in a pool of his own blood, but she knew her former house leader and the man who still owned her heart from beyond the grave were fundamentally different people. Of course one valued his life over his schemes and the other was willing to die for his country. In the end, Claude’s and Dimitri’s beliefs were just different.

“Asking him to give up his crown would only mean asking him to give up part of himself, huh?” Mercedes quietly asked.

Marianne nodded. “He wouldn’t be able to live with himself, knowing he let his father down by letting the Kingdom be absorbed into the Empire again. But who knows? Rhea probably wouldn’t stand for Dimitri surrendering to Edelgard, so maybe _she_ would’ve killed him instead for betraying her. I can’t help but feel the Kingdom was destined to lose the war the moment Professor Byleth returned from the dead.”

“There’s no need to call Byleth that anymore, Marianne,” Mercedes gently corrected her. “They’re no longer a professor of ours. They’re probably with Edelgard and Hubert now, planning the defeat of those awful people that apparently are responsible for many slights against Edelgard herself and countless others.”

“And is it truly okay for you to sit out that fight?” Marianne asked nervously. Not only was the archbishop revealed to be a dragon, there also exists a group of wicked people who live underground, who are actively trying to dethrone Edelgard and supplant her rule. The peace she believed existed after Fhirdiad burned to ashes was apparently false. 

The amount of things that was apparently kept from public knowledge seemed to only grow in number and Marianne felt that if she were a part of Emperor Edelgard’s inner circle, she’d be more privy to those secrets instead of being endlessly baffled.

“Like I said, I wasn’t held hostage by Edelgard,” Mercedes answered. “However, I am deeply concerned for my brother, as well as all of my other friends who have thrown themselves into the fight. I’m still getting infrequent letters from Sylvain and Ingrid, and my brother promised to return alive to me and my mother, no matter what. I will have to trust in them for now.”

“I’m sorry I’m preventing you from being with your brother right now. I feel like I’m always keeping people back, no matter the situation.”

“Nonsense,” Mercedes insisted, shaking her fine, fair hair. “I’m happier helping to welcome a new life into this world instead of pushing myself through yet another war. And you’re my friend, Marianne. I just can’t leave you be, not after everything you’ve been through. You don’t deserve that, so I promise I’ll always be here for you when you need me.” 

* * *

_ It felt horrible for Marianne to even think such a thing, but sometimes, she felt like the only person in the Kingdom’s army who didn’t trust Rhea. _

_ Perhaps some people would be surprised if she expressed such a sentiment out loud, given her devout nature, but Marianne’s devotion belonged to the goddess and the goddess alone. She felt no attachment towards the archbishop or even the Church of Seiros as an entity. She knew she could pray without their presence, and the goddess never stopped watching humanity, even if the holy buildings built in her name were claimed by heretics trying to kill the archbishop. _

_ If anything, Marianne felt no obligation to swear loyalty to Rhea. She is only loyal now because Dimitri chose to be loyal to her. _

_ But she must admit that Rhea was indeed important to the Kingdom’s army and to the citizens of Faerghus, in turn. They speak of her kindness all the time as Marianne helped heal the wounded and sick. They complimented Marianne on her good bedside manner by comparing her to the archbishop, which Marianne couldn’t accept such words in good grace. _

_ This was Marianne’s job now that she resolved to make herself useful to the Kingdom. Annette gushed over her skill with white magic, saying she was just as talented a healer as Mercedes, which Marianne could also not accept with good grace. _

_ Mercedes had cut ties with her adoptive father and seemingly went missing for a spell after that, only to apparently reappear in Empire territory, healing a soldier clad in black and red. As of right now, it’s surely confirmed that Mercedes had officially defected from the Kingdom and returned to her home country to pledge fealty to the emperor. Annette’s cheerfulness, at first glance, seemed to be untouched by such a revelation, but Marianne sometimes witnessed her sob on Ashe’s shoulder or vent angrily to a quiet and thoughtful Dedue before seeing her wear her bright and lovely smile once more. _

_ A small part of Marianne yearned to reach out to Annette and comfort her too during this dark time, but she forced herself to remain out of it. After all, she can hardly say she knew Annette all that well, despite the shorter girl’s attempts to befriend her back during their academy days. _

_ She supposed because she never got to transfer classes when she had the chance to, Marianne always felt like an outsider among the former Blue Lions, at least among Ashe, Annette, and Dedue. Dimitri never failed to make her feel welcome, but even he can’t cure her of her crippling awkwardness. _

_ Oh, if only Hilda were here. _

_ But since she wasn’t, Marianne resolved to work on her social skills by keeping the injured and sick company while they recuperated, and as a result, she heard what they had to say from their perspective on the war.  _

_ They spoke of the slanderous propaganda the Empire is trying to spread across the continent, claiming Rhea is a monster in human skin and that she held more power over the government of Fodlan than the people knew. They spoke of the fires the Empire tried to set on poorer territories in the Kingdom in an effort to get them to surrender, but the Knights of Seiros saved them from the destruction. They spoke of how plainly wicked the emperor had revealed herself to be, no longer wearing the mask of an innocent schoolgirl or of a dark-cloaked, mysterious figure. _

_ They spoke of how they desired to see the Adrestian emperor burned to ashes with the fire she tried to set upon their villages and to their churches. How they hoped their king would smile upon seeing it, rejoice as the wicked Empire was forced to acknowledge the Kingdom’s strength once more. _

_ Marianne saw Edelgard exactly once before seeking refuge in Fhirdiad, and that was when her adoptive father swore fealty to her cause. She visited Edmund estate personally, flocked by Hubert and several other soldiers, and was surprised to see that Marianne wasn’t dead, even matured a little bit since they last saw each other. _

_ They exchanged very little words. Marianne was little more than a decoration in her adoptive father’s office as he bent the knee for Her Majesty and swore himself to the Empire. Marianne was only thankful Edelgard did not demand she get on her knees as well, and that Hubert remained silent throughout, for the man always terrified her. She found him almost as unnerving as Professor Byleth. _

_ Despite the crown on her head, despite the subordinates that flocked her every move, Marianne couldn’t help but think she still looked every bit the young woman she was back at Garreg Mach. Just another girl like anyone else, and Marianne mused if Edelgard wore a blood red cape and heavy boots so she looked every bit the wicked tyrant her enemies were so determined to paint her as. _

_ But there was no point in wasting her time speculating about the emperor of Adrestia. That woman is currently continuing her blood-soaked campaign after seizing Derdriu, and with it, all of Alliance territory. _

_ Leicester was no more. It has been absorbed once more under Adrestia’s name. The red flags that flew from Edmund estate will now adorn the door of every noble house. Including that of Goneril. _

_ (Marianne knew her best friend well. She knew Hilda was too self-serving to consider dying for her country. She wouldn’t even consider dying for something as invisible or as flimsy as integrity or loyalty. She did not worry for Hilda’s safety. She did not worry for Hilda’s safety at all.) _

_ The Black Eagle Strike Force (Marianne had to double check to make sure if that was the actual name of the group led by the nefarious Flame Emperor that was conquering territories left and right) was proceeding to make their march to Kingdom territory. Marianne could already smell the fire that trailed behind Emperor Edelgard’s march, the fire that set ablaze her enemies and aimed to burn the archbishop for all of her supposed lies and misdeeds. _

_ Dimitri couldn’t let his face crumble before his subjects, those who were counting on him to exact their revenge against Edelgard for burning their villages and killing their loved ones in the name of her ideals. But Marianne could see the stress and agitation weighing down on his shoulders and creasing his brow that flew over everyone else’s head but hers and Dedue’s. _

_ Though Marianne feared she couldn’t say she progressed much on her mission to make more friends within the former Blue Lions, she can safely say she and Dedue’s interests aligned when it came to their shared devotion to Dimitri. She wasn’t sure if she could properly build a friendship off of that, especially with how aloof the taller man was in regards to people outside Dimitri, Ashe, and Annette, but it couldn’t hurt to try in the future. _

_ Dedue knew Dimitri’s habits all too well from years of friendship and Marianne knew how painful it was to jolt awake in the middle of the night, shuddering from nightmares that still clung to your skin as if they had a presence in the physical world. The two of them might as well be a perfect duo in keeping Dimitri in line when others couldn’t. Dedue had told her Lord Rodrigue would be right beside them fussing over Dimitri if he wasn’t busy assembling his army at Arianrhod. _

_ “I feel as if the both of you are mothering me now,” Dimitri said in a voice that almost sounded like a  _ whine _ , as Marianne walked into his room as if it didn’t belong to a king to sit on his bed, where Dimitri sat upright from beneath the covers. She had heard him shudder awake from nightmares of the whispering dead and couldn’t leave him alone to suffer in the clenching dark of his ghosts. He had the name of his dead father on his lips when Marianne swung the door open and lit a candle. _

_ “I’m sorry if you find our active concern over your well-being bothersome,” Marianne impulsively snapped. The words didn’t mean to come out so harshly and she is suddenly reminded of the several classes her adoptive father tried to train her in that demanded she put her opponents in her place with only her words.  _

_ If he heard her snap back at a  _ king _ , he would be so proud of her. _

_ “I’m sorry,” Dimitri apologized as if it was a reflex, which concerned Marianne because it could mean he didn’t actually mean it. “I . . . . . I appreciate all that you’ve done for me.” _

_ “It’s the least I could do for you,” Marianne insisted. “After what you said to me earlier, how could I not devote myself to you? I can’t help but think that you saved my life, just like you saved Dedue’s.” _

_ “Oh no, you really have been spending too much time with him,” Dimitri said in pure jest, cracking a rare smile that nearly sent Marianne’s heart into a dangerously fast gallop. _

_ Oh, right. She’s in love with this ridiculous man. Not even a war would let her forget that, even for a moment. _

_ “I suppose I don’t do as good as a job as him, though,” Marianne tried to railroad the conversation elsewhere to draw attention away from her burning cheeks. _

_ “Nonsense,” Dimitri said earnestly, which made the situation of Marianne’s obvious blush worse with his fatally gentle smile. “I’m endlessly grateful for your presence.” _

_ "I’m trying my best,” was all that she could say in response to keep herself from tripping over her words. Hilda  _ did  _ say she was hopelessly clumsy. _

_ “Marianne,” Dimitri began again, still wearing an expression that made Marianne’s heart pulse like a rabbit’s. “This is why you are so dear to me. This is why I find myself so weak in your presence. You are so . . . . . good and gentle. This war brings out the worst in all of us, but all it has done to you is reveal how truly you deserve only good things in this world, and yet you chose to be at my side instead of your adoptive father’s. You know that some former Alliance lords like him and Count Gloucester are celebrating the Empire’s victory, right? If you were with him, they’d proclaim your family is on the winning side of the war.” _

_ “There’s nowhere I’d rather be but here,” Marianne reassured him. “Even if Black Eagle Strike Force comes to Fhirdiad themselves, I would never leave you.” _

_ “Please don’t say that,” Dimitri said with a wince and a shake of his head. “I want to believe in what Rodrigue says and that the Strike Force shall fall at Arianrhod. It is, after all, our strongest fortress against invaders. The smallest amount of doubt that they won’t fall there unfortunately sends me spiraling, I’m afraid.” _

_ “Sorry!” Marianne yelped. “I didn’t mean to imply it’s possible you’ll lose at Arianrhod. Lord Rodrigue is a strong and capable man, after all.” _

_ “He is,” Dimitri affirmed, and his face softened at the mention of the man. Marianne wished she had such a relationship with Margrave Edmund. “He wholeheartedly believes in my ability to lead the Kingdom to victory, but I can’t help but compare myself to him and see myself falling short. Ever since I was a child, I wanted to grow up to be exactly like him, you know?” _

_ Marianne chuckled. “I can see why.” _

_ “Felix used to whine about my hero complex regarding his brother and his father,” Dimitri recalled fondly, and Marianne already knew where the conversation was going to head before Dimitri’s frown resurfaced. “I wonder if Felix will be there at Arianrhod. Surely, even a man who has turned his back on his country cannot think of killing his own father.” _

_ “You should stop thinking about him,” Marianne said a little too sharply, horrified that she found herself tired of hearing that man’s name pass Dimitri’s lips. “He’s not of your concern anymore, or of the Kingdom’s.” _

_ He was Dimitri’s oldest friend, she knew that. They were apparently introduced to each other a few months after Felix’s birth. But that apparently didn’t stop Felix from abandoning Faerghus without even an explanation as to why.  _

_ Marianne didn’t like him. She knew that much. And considering all that has happened and how it has affected Dimitri, that was all she needed to know. She has seen Dimitri throw away countless attempts at correspondence with his estranged friend into the fireplace and she has resisted the urge to offer to throw the attempted letters into the roaring flames herself. _

_ Saints, she knew she was awful for it, but she couldn’t  _ help it _. It wasn’t like Felix tried his best to be a likable person back at Garreg Mach, either. If anything, Marianne didn’t know what spell made people like Dimitri, Annette, and Ashe insist he was a good person deep down underneath all of his prickly spines. _

_ “I know what that face you’re making means,” Dimitri said in an almost teasing tone, making Marianne flush out of embarrassment. “I understand what our relationship looks like on the outside. But you must believe me when I say this: Felix was right when he called me a beast in human skin. I fear I am indeed the master of deception he claimed me to be five years ago.” _

_ “That cannot be true,” Marianne shook her head stubbornly. “You’re exaggerating. You’re just trying to protect your friend’s honor.” _

_ “You can only say that with confidence because you have never ventured forth inside of my head,” Dimitri chuckled, before his expression turned grim. “Ever since the Tragedy, I’ve suffered from violent thoughts that I forced myself to not act upon in order for everyone else’s safety. But I let the mask slip in front of Felix once and he has never forgiven me for what he saw. I do not blame him. Perhaps you would’ve done the same had you been in his position that day.” _

_ “I wouldn’t!” Marianne cried, offended that Dimitri would even suggest such a thing. “Even if your mask slips in front of me, I would never dare be cruel to you the way Felix has. I would never dare abandon you like he has.” _

_ He smiled, and the sight filled Marianne with rage. She wanted to beat her fists against his chest for trying to convince her of these awful things.  _

_ “I can truly never convince you to leave, can I?” Dimitri’s voice was almost sardonic, his smile almost teasing like he was sharing an inside joke with a friend. _

_ “I’m sorry to tell you this, but I  _ did  _ say nothing could happen in this war that would make me leave your side,” Marianne said almost angrily, her fists bundling up handfuls of silk bed sheets. _

_ “Indeed, you did,” Dimitri said seriously at last. His expression turned grim. “But I don’t understand why you find me such a special person. If you went to anyone else during that dark moment in your life, you would’ve surely received better advice. Instead, all I did was admit I didn’t have any answers and then you joined my army. I find it perplexing, if anything else.”  _

_ “The fact that you knew you didn’t have the answers but refused to brush me off regardless was what made you special,”Marianne said, sudden firmness taking hold in her voice. “You didn’t pretend to know my perspective better than I knew it or try to keep your distance after I revealed myself to be the mess that I was. You  _ inspired  _ me, Dimitri. I can’t believe I was able to meet someone who just  _ understands _ me so intimately in my lifetime. I don’t think I’ll ever encounter anyone else like you in my life.” _

_ A heavy pause passed between them, setting Marianne’s heartbeat wild within the confines of her ribcage. She felt overwhelmed with her feelings, almost to a painful degree. Being around Dimitri has never hurt her, but having feelings for him did, since she knew what a precarious position their relationship was in. Any day, either one of them could die, and once that happened, nothing could be done to reverse such a tragedy. _

_ Marianne thought herself far too used to the prospect of people leaving her, even encouraged it at times for their own good, but the idea of losing Dimitri like she lost her parents made her convulse all over like she was ill. _

_ “ . . . . . . I’m so happy that I spoke to you in the cathedral that day, Marianne,” Dimitri finally said to break the silence. “I fear I do not have much faith in the goddess, or at least faith that she interferes in our lives as much as Rhea says she does, but I will thank her a thousand times over for allowing me to meet you. I truly do not deserve you. Part of me wishes I could confess all the horrible thoughts I have every waking moment when I am all alone, but part of me selfishly wishes for you to think of me as you already do, so that you do not fear me and abandon me for the safety of Edmund. You do not have any obligation to serve me, not when you are not of the Kingdom. You could run away. You could’ve run away so long ago. Instead, you chose to doom yourself with me, perhaps the worst king in all of my family’s history.” _

_ “No matter what you say to convince me, I won’t leave your side,” Marianne said. From the look in Dimitri’s eyes, it already looked like he didn’t believe her. She wasn’t even sure if she believed in herself to keep up that promise. She just knew she couldn’t be like Felix, or Sylvain, or Ingrid; people who were supposed to be the prince’s closest friends and yet abandoned him for his greatest enemy. “I won’t leave for Edmund, even if it means that I get to survive the war. No matter what you think of yourself, I’ll always believe you to be a good person, Dimitri. One who doesn’t deserve to be abandoned by others . . . . . . . . ” _

_ She took a shaky breath before saying her next words, and tears sprang into the corners of her eyes, threatening to slide down her face, as she did so. _

_ “ . . . . . . forgive me, but I will be there for you, whether you want me to or not.” _

_ It was unbelievably cheesy of her, and who knows if Dimitri even remembered what he said to her during their first conversation one on one in the cathedral? But she remembered his words sharply, every syllable of that sentence, even if she forgot the rest. If she could talk to the girl she was five years ago, she would’ve told her that she should not fear the golden-haired boy with a smile like sunlight. _

_ She should not fear anyone who had to walk with the same burdens she had precariously balanced on her shoulders. She wished she had recognized it then, but he walked with much more grace than her, a pride that fit royalty like his fellow house leaders, but hid a boy with a soul bruised from grief and loneliness. _

_ “Marianne . . . . . . .” was all that came out of Dimitri’s mouth before laughter tumbled out shortly afterwards, bright and sweet like the sound of bells.  _

_ He laughed so hard his eyes crinkled and dimples appeared on his cheeks. With his broad, intimidating silhouette and matted hair, it was such a strange image, but one that Marianne loved and wanted to hold dearly to her heart. She understood Dimitri’s reaction to her laughing in front of him in the dining hall so long ago. Who knew she would be able to repeat such innocent memories during such a horrible war? _

_ Marianne couldn’t help but laugh along with him, and it wasn’t long until both of them were but a hair’s breadth away from colliding their faces together. Marianne suddenly flushed with heat, but she couldn’t find herself pulling away from the King of Faerghus. The heartbeat going wild in her ribcage now felt as if it was reverberating into every inch of her body, no escaping the fact that she was utterly in love with the man in front of her, in love with His Majesty, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. _

_ Dimitri’s laugh faded away until it was replaced by a few awkward huffs of breath that brushed against Marianne’s eyelashes. If she tilted her head up upwards, she would find herself knocking the tips of their noses together. _

_ Why did such an image make her feel such  _ heat  _ in her body? _

_ “Marianne . . . . .” Dimitri breathed out, the syllables of his voice strangely low in a way that was unfamiliar but not unwelcome. He cleared his voice a couple of times before continuing, sounding almost childish as he did so. _

_ “Can I--I mean, would you object if I . . . . . ugh, no, don’t say that to her . . . . . . . . . . . .” _

_ “Dimitri?” Marianne all but whispered. Her cheeks must surely be crimson at this point, and the feeling of Dimitri so close to her, close enough to wrap herself up in his arms, made her thoughts run towards places she thought she would never be able to indulge in, considering her skill with the opposite sex.  _

_ Was he thinking the same things? Did he think of her in such a light? Does that confirm what she anxiously wanted to be answered ever since she was welcomed into Faerghus’s army? She thought the possibility to be absurd up until now. _

_ Now, she felt sincere, fervent hope that Dimitri felt the same as her. She wanted her feelings to be requited. She had no desire to languish in silent affection for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t force her feelings onto Dimitri if he rejected her, but for once, she didn’t feel content with the idea of silencing herself. _

_ She wanted to make her feelings known. _

_ Dimitri locked gazes with her for a good long while, before pressing his forehead against hers, lifting her chin up and closing his eyes. _

_ He shuddered, and Marianne felt every vibration of his body like it was her own. _

_ “Tell me to stop if this is disturbing you,” Dimitri murmured, almost endearingly bashful despite the deep tone of his voice. He sounded scared. Scared of himself, of what he might do. It was laughably absurd, considering his status. He had the power to take what he wanted--demand it of her, even--and yet, he faltered. “Just say the word, and I’ll leave you be.” _

_ Heat coursed through Marianne’s veins, and she could already feel sweat gather in her clenched fists. She  _ wanted  _ this, she realized dizzily. She wanted Dimitri upon her, and she was not naive to what that entailed. Her adoptive father educated her rather frankly in these matters, telling her that this will be eventually necessary in her future, and then Hilda became her closest friend at Garreg Mach, and it all went downhill from there. _

_ She wondered what he looked like underneath all that armor and fur. She wanted to explore it, imagining that no one else has probably gotten as close as she has gotten at this point. _

_ “Why would I do that?” Marianne said, and in an act of surprising assertiveness, pulled herself forward until she was essentially climbing into Dimitri’s lap. She wasn’t as graceful as she hoped she would be--she almost knocked Dimitri over in her haste, and their noses came dangerously close to slamming into each other--but she reached her goal regardless. _

_ She entwined her arms around the King of Faerghus’s neck and Dimitri no longer had any doubts about what Marianne wanted. He wrapped his arms around her waist in kind, and pulled her into what was her first kiss. _

_ It was not long until Marianne realized why Dimitri had wanted her to tell him to stop. The kiss was not soft or gentle like what Marianne had heard first kisses were like between a young maiden and a king. Dimitri’s fingers were long and thick, she realized, as he pulled at her braids until they unraveled beneath his grasp. He seemed to like wrapping his fingers into her strands, almost like he was anchoring himself as their kiss continued. _

_ When they pulled apart for air, they only let themselves take in a few breaths before diving in for more, like they were hungry for it, ravenous. It almost felt disappointing when Marianne forced herself to pull away from Dimitri’s lips once again in order to calm her aching lungs, at least, until Dimitri’s mouth fastened itself to her throat. Then she didn’t mind not having her lips on his one bit. _

_ At some point, Dimitri’s kisses started to feel more like bites, and still, Marianne did not want to stop. _

_ She didn’t know how much time had passed when she found herself on her back, hair loose and scattered across the sheets. Dimitri looked upon Marianne in her entirety, with swollen lips and bites on her collarbone and shoulders, before descending upon her once more, his beloved eagerly welcoming him with open arms as he did so. _ __

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: (doesn't open fic doc after the last chapter update, not even when quarantine starts and school closes)
> 
> me two days ago: hmmmm, let's check on my nonexistent progress on this chapter
> 
> me: (proceeds to write like there was no tomorrow, suddenly finishing conversations that I thought would never get finished because I was stuck on them for days, rewriting several paragraphs to fit CF!Dimitri's characterization better after watching bits and pieces of let's plays, restructured the entire second half of the chapter after realizing my CF!Rhea depiction was a little off, rewrote the entire fucking timeline of events because the baby was almost conceived *after* Arianrhod, can you believe it, all in the timespan of two days)
> 
> Yeah. I'm a little proud myself, honestly. The reason I cut off the last chapter in the place where it was because I couldn't figure out how to proceed Marianne's and Mercedes's conversation and almost cried myself to sleep thinking this writer's block would be eternal until I randomly opened Google Docs again and the spirit of writing possessed me.
> 
> Which means I can maybe finish that dimilix au one-shot that I've also been procrastinating on forever.
> 
> Last time I updated this fic, I wasn't stuck in quarantine and waking up every day with a constant sense of impending doom, wondering if I'll live to see the world end before I even turn twenty. So please, comment if you can because you better believe it'll keep me going in Extremely Trying(TM) times. Some readers have been inspired to see Marianne in an entirely new light because of this fic and I cry thinking about that. So please use this time to spread some kindness because we're all stuck in this together and it'll apparently take a while until a sixteen-year-old white girl finally decides to be the YA protagonist that'll save the world and devour the rich, so we need to wait it out until then.
> 
> I'd volunteer to be that YA protagonist, but unfortunately, I am not white. I'll probably die offscreen for someone else's character development instead.


	4. prologue (iv)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for details about childbirth and mentions of blood.

_ Marianne was in denial for the longest time when the symptoms first emerged. _

_ She had told herself the headaches and the fatigue were just more of the simple pains of living in the body she inhabited, one that constantly subjected her to days of listlessness and waking up in the morning still exhausted despite having a whole night of sleep. But then came the nausea and the vomiting and the violent, constant swinging from complete aversion to food to sudden cravings. _

_ She came across undeniable proof that she was what she deeply feared when her monthly blood did not come on the day she expected it. _

_ Marianne figured that it was only her who suspected for the first couple of days, but then Dedue had shown up at her door with a quiet pensiveness engraved onto his face. _

_ “You’ve been sneaking around,” he began, and his tone wasn’t accusatory, he possessed not the slightest hint of wariness or distrust in his eyes, but Marianne’s anxiety had to reach its peak at the worst moment and she had confessed her secret right then, thankfully behind a locked door, but she spilled everything she had been holding back regardless. _

_ “ . . . . . . I honestly must admit I was not expecting that,” Dedue said, blinking rapidly for a moment before his face smoothed over back to its usual stillness. _

_ “Please don’t tell Dimitri,” Marianne quietly begged. “I know better than to think he would get mad at me, but at the same time--” _

_ She couldn’t finish her sentence and felt as if she could cry right now. She had been so giddily happy the morning she woke up in Dimitri’s arms. She had done something she never in her life expected herself to do, indulged in a wonderful pleasure she thought people like her weren’t allowed to have. _

_ She should’ve known that something would happen that would snatch that happiness away and replace it with anxiety she is all too used to feeling, but this time, magnified at a level she had never experienced before. _

_ She never once dreamed of being a mother. Told herself throughout her life that beasts like her should never reproduce in order to protect the world from further danger of being tainted with the presence of her bloodline. _

_ But then she remembered that this baby growing inside her was just as much Dimitri’s as it was hers, and her feelings toward it suddenly shifted. _

_ Treacherously, she started to imagine holding a baby in her arms, Dimitri at her back and gazing over her shoulder to look upon the small bundle of life they had both put forth into the world. _

_ “What am I thinking?” Marianne asked herself with a breathy laugh. She was unaware that she was speaking aloud and that Dedue could hear her with perfect clarity. “I’m not someone fit to give birth to his children. The children he deserves shouldn’t carry the risk of bearing my Crest! Someone like me isn’t fit to be a mother at all, much less the mother of  _ his  _ children! He would have to propose to me, and as if I’m even good enough for that! My adoptive father prepared me for this moment my whole life and I shouldn’t even be allowed to have it! I shouldn’t be allowed to be someone’s mother! I shouldn’t be allowed to be anyone’s  _ queen _! I shouldn’t have even come here to Fhirdiad at all if it results in me daring to daydream about being his wife and the mother of his children! What’s wrong with me? What in Ailell is wrong with--" _

_ “Marianne,” Dedue interrupted her sharply, and Marianne suddenly became aware of his hands on her shoulders. She then became aware of her knees on the ground and her hands clutched tightly at the sleeves of her dress. _

_ She once again made a fool of herself in front of someone, burdening them with her disgusting feelings. _

_ “I will not speak of the behalf of His Majesty, but I can speak on behalf of myself and I can surely say that you are most certainly someone worthy of being his future wife. It is clear to everyone here that His Majesty dearly loves you. If you do not believe me, you can ask Annette or Ashe and they will confirm it just as I have.” _

_ “T-T-That’s . . . . .” Marianne began, not sure where she was even going, opening her mouth, so Dedue took the cue to continue speaking. _

_ “He could never stop speaking of you back during our days at the monastery,” he continued. _

_ “I don’t doubt the idea of him loving me,” Marianne interrupted him. “It’s just that if this becomes known, I would be obligated to marry him. This child would be obligated to become next in line for the throne of Faerghus. Someone with my Crest cannot become a queen. I spent my whole life avoiding people in order to not spread my curse. Surely, accepting the position of queen consort would mean I would spread my curse to the entire Kingdom.” _

_ “I wasn’t even aware myself that you possessed a Crest,” Dedue said. _

_ “It’s an awful one, that’s all you have to know,” Marianne said bitterly, wringing her hands together. “If he knew the true nature of my bloodline, he wouldn’t want me to carry his children.” _

_ “I think His Majesty cares more about you than how many children you can produce for him,” Dedue reassured her, offering a hand to get her back on her feet. _

_ Marianne still couldn’t bring herself to look up from the floor. “He is a king, though, and a king will need heirs in the future. But a beast doesn’t deserve to sit on a throne, nor wear the crown of a queen. Before my father disappeared, he told me he was sorry that I bore his curse. What if I have to say the same to my child in the future?” _

_ “I am afraid I do not know the answer to such a question,” Dedue said, and to anyone else, that might have come off as a cold statement. But Marianne could see a flicker of helplessness in his eyes that does not reflect on the rest of his face and body. He was a master of remaining still and stoic, perhaps having trained himself to be so ever since he was a child. _

_ “Why can’t I be happy about this?” Marianne began to sob. She felt so childish to cry again, but these were her feelings. “I love him, and I know he loves me, and I want to live for once, fight for a future I never thought I would allow myself to live. But this is going to complicate everything. He’s fighting a war, for the goddess’s sake! This would just be a burden to him. Maybe I should just leave for Edmund before I begin to show.” _

_ But even the thought of doing such a thing fractured Marianne’s heart to pieces. She cannot do such a thing. She cannot break the promise she made to him to never leave his side. She would not be like Sylvain, Ingrid, and Felix. _

_ She would not turn his back on him after what she had told him that night their child was . . . . . conceived. _

_ She could not run away from this. She would confess the truth to him. Whether this revelation would make him reject her or not would be up to him. _

_ Steeling herself, Marianne dried her eyes with the backs of her fists. When she looked up Dedue once more, his eyes were filled with a deep, piercing concern. One that felt warm and protective. For a brief moment, Marianne felt scorn for every Faerghan she has ever overheard call this man a barely contained savage. _

_ “You are free to do whatever you want, Marianne, and my thoughts on the matter should not have any impact on your decision,” Dedue began, a pained expression on his face. He was silent for a minute, detangling what he wished to say before opening his mouth once more. “But if you wished to know, I would be very . . . . . pained to see you go if you do decide to leave for Edmund.” _

_ Marianne could only stare at him briefly before feeling the echoes of a laugh form inside of her throat. _

_ She never realized he grew to care for her so quickly. She realized that she felt the same way.  _

_ “Do not worry, Dedue,” Marianne said to reassure him. A smile twitched onto her lips before she even knew it was forming. “I’m not going anywhere. At least not while Dimitri is still unaware of this. I’ll tell him everything and how he feels about this would be his choice. If we defeat the Imperial Army at Arianrhod, then there would be no reason for me to leave Fhirdiad, right?” _

_ “Right,” Dedue repeated, and an almost relieved smile formed at the edges of his mouth. It was endearing.  _

_ While it was clear that Dedue knew nothing of Marianne’s past or the nature of her Crest, she was glad that he did not dare to lecture her on it. He was similar to Dimitri like that. _

_ He had survived a horrible tragedy, too. One much larger than Marianne could ever fathom. Not just the loss of his family and his innocence, but his culture, his home, his dignity, and an inextricable part of his childhood. _

_ Had it not been for the war, Marianne would’ve loved to ask him more about his own troubles. Return the favor and perhaps invite him into the circle she and Dimitri created with their mutual understanding of their troubles. _

_ When the familiar red flags of Adrestia began to fly over the Tailtean Plains, Marianne wept for Dedue as much as she wept for Dimitri. _

_ And it was more heartbreaking to know that the remaining citizens of Faerghus will mourn Dimitri along with Marianne, but she was the last one left to grieve Dedue, for Ashe and Annette died in Fhirdiad and there was no one else alive to care for the loss of another Duscuran, or at least, no one else who will remember him outside of his service to the king. _

* * *

Inevitably, as the day of her child’s due date drew closer, Marianne ended up thinking about her own parents.

When she thought about her parents, she thought about her blood. She thought about her curse.

It wasn’t that she had any bad memories of her parents. In fact, those idyllic days of her father teaching her how to ride and tame horses and her mother teaching her the basics of medicine and healing were memories Marianne held fast onto in her heart. She cherished them very dearly. Because of them, she knew what unconditional love felt like.

But at the same time, when she was alone and she was reflecting on the past, she questioned if her father knew he carried cursed blood, why did he choose to have her? He could’ve chosen to not risk impregnating his wife, or refused to marry entirely, to rid the world of the Crest of the Beast. Why? Why did he take the risk of having a child? If he knew the dangers of his Crest, like all who did before him, why was she even born?

It was a great risk for her to be born, but her parents allowed it anyway. Even though her presence must’ve burdened them, they did not do a single thing to harm her. When bad luck found them, her parents insisted that it must’ve been the result of her father’s Crest, not hers. Though it was illogical, they refused to see her as a cursed being.

_ Would I be able to do the same if my child bore the same Crest as mine? Would I be able to deal with not only making sure I did not wake as a beast in the middle of the night, but checking my child to see that they did not grow claws? _

The image of her own hands twisting and transforming into that of an unrecognizable monster was a frequent subject of Marianne’s nightmares. She might not be able to bear the image of carrying her child, wrapping them in sweet blankets and singing lullabies to them every night, only to peer at their face and see fangs snarl back at her.

She shouldn’t be indulging in these thoughts. They were dangerous. They were not the thoughts an expectant mother should have. What sort of mother feared her own innocent baby? Who in their right mind would ever even dare think ill of a helpless infant, make a monster of them?

If Dimitri’s child was to be born a monster harboring cursed blood, then that would only be Marianne’s fault.

Biting her lip, Marianne thought of her mother, to keep herself from spiraling down a darker line of thought. Over the years, the images of her childhood became hazy, wrapped in the warm soft glow of nostalgia but lacking coherent details, but she remembered having a mother.

Did her mother fear her, back when they were together? Did her mother ever wake in the middle of the night to check if her daughter had transformed into a beast in her sleep? Marianne remembered her mother also slept in the same bed as her father’s, so did she ever have to take precautions against the man she married, in case the warm presence next to her sleeping body turned inhuman?

The more she thought of it, the more pride welled in Marianne’s heart at the thought of her mother. She knew who she was marrying, knew who her daughter was, but loved her family fiercely, even though both her husband and child were cursed beings. She chose to live her life with them when she could’ve easily left, and Marianne did not possess a single memory of her mother ever being bitter about her situation, only ever asking her daughter if she was okay, if she was hurt.

She had treated Marianne and her father like they were human when she had no obligation to.

Though they had vanished before Marianne was ever able to ask them how they met, what made them fall in love, she couldn’t help but wonder if her father had found in her mother what she had found in Dimitri.

Unconditional comfort. Love, even when you didn’t feel as if you deserved it.

When she placed the image of her own mother next to Mercedes’s, Marianne’s own inadequacies only sharpened.

While they refused to feel bitter towards those they were taking care of, Marianne had imagined the possibility of giving birth to an inhuman beast.

Marianne’s birthday passed, and she turned twenty four. Her child was still not yet born, but Marianne spent much of her time wringing her hands together, pacing back and forth in her room, feeling anxious and fearful instead of the excitement one would expect from a mother-to-be. Marianne couldn’t even find it in herself to be excited simply so that her body will be her own again and she won’t be afflicted with constant nausea and food cravings anymore.

Instead, she felt sick with worry, and prayed to the goddess daily that her child will not be given a drop of her blood, even if it meant they would end up looking nothing like her.

Marianne had spent her whole life fearful of her own body, her own blood. She will not condemn her child to the same fate.

* * *

_ Embarrassingly enough, Marianne had accidentally mistook Lord Rodrigue for Felix once or twice. It was a foolish mistake, since Lord Rodrigue was undeniably older and possessed a wave to his hair and blue eyes that his son lacked. _

_ Still, once or twice, she had jumped when he demanded his attention. When she brought her gaze up to look him in the eye, she couldn’t help but see Felix, a boy she hardly knew during school but his presence in her memory was deeply etched regardless. _

_ It wasn’t just that Felix had defected to fight for the Empire. In fact, Marianne disliked Felix long before the war even started. She had hated him for treating Dimitri as someone inhuman, for calling him demeaning names and telling him that they weren’t friends despite constantly calling for his attention when Dimitri decided to not let his thoughts dwell on him. _

_ Many people have defected to the Empire, Marianne had to remind herself. For the goddess’s sake, Lorenz and Lysithea had defected to the Empire and Marianne couldn’t find a single bitter thought regarding them. If anything, she pitied Lorenz and wished him free of his father and envied Lysithea for her boldness and her strength to fight for what she believed in. _

_ But thinking of Felix made a hot fire light up across her skin and nothing close to such a feeling ever sparked when Marianne thought of Ingrid or Sylvain, who were also close to Dimitri and yet turned their backs on him.  _

_ It was simple pettiness, then. Strangely, Marianne did not feel guilty for having petty feelings towards Felix. It felt good, to allow herself to be unambiguously bitter and angry at another instead of her own person. _

_ Goddess, she didn’t even feel this way towards  _ Edelgard _ , the woman who declared war in the first place. Truly, Marianne knew she was being unfair towards Felix. _

_ But it didn’t really matter, did it? If she and Felix ever met each other again, he would probably be trying to kill her. _

_ At the thought of his blade plunging into her neck, Marianne’s hand flew to her abdomen. _

_ She swallowed something thick in her throat. After spending so much of her life despising her body for still breathing, it was hard for her to fathom that she was harboring another life within her. If her heart ever stopped, her child would also die with her. _

_ It was a hard fact for her to swallow. _

_ In between taking care of the sick and injured, Marianne spent her time contemplating what she would say to Dimitri. _

_ Predictably, her mind was fond of imagining the worst case scenario. She had to shake her head and chastise herself for thinking Dimitri would ever be cruel to her like that. Still, it was a process she had to work at every day to remember that others weren’t out to get her, that others wanted to be kind to her. _

_ It was also a process to remember Dimitri had confirmed to her that her feelings were not unrequited. _

_ She tried to imagine how she would feel if he proposed marriage after she told him. Her heart felt light and happy but her anxiety clung to her like ivy stubbornly growing against a wall, tainting the simple happiness one should feel when imagining someone they love proposing to them. _

_ She was still haunted by thoughts of an inhuman beast sitting on the throne. Of her husband’s citizens turning against her and calling her a monster like that Crest scholar did so many years ago. _

_ Who would accept a beast as a queen, much less an heir to the crown? _

_ The thoughts continued to haunt her no matter the time of day, until she finally forced herself out of bed one night to map out her words to Dimitri, aimlessly wandering the halls with only the moonlight to guide her footsteps. _

_ Marianne was in the midst of murmuring to herself, pretending she was speaking to Dimitri before her as she walked, when she saw Lord Rodrigue in the distance, standing in front of a window and seemingly brooding in a way that brought Felix’s image to her mind’s eye. _

_ Unfortunately, he had caught Marianne’s eye when he turned his gaze ever so slightly away from the view outside. _

_ “Marianne,” he called out, with a friendly smile on his face. His gentle voice and soft mannerisms gave Marianne shock every time. It made her jump, wondering if this was what Felix would look like if he had a more gentlemanly personality. “I'm surprised to see you out and about so late at night.” _

_ “Likewise, Lord Rodrigue,” Marianne answered, instinctively dropping into a slight curtsy. _

_ “No need for such formal titles,” Rodrigue admonished her, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t treat me as someone you must impress. I am already awed by what you have done for His Majesty.” _ _  
_ _ Marianne flushed and looked down at the floor. “I think Dimitri has done much more for me than I have ever done for him. Without him, I would’ve . . . . . probably remained in Edmund, listless and unable to fight.” _

_ She held herself back from confessing she was tempted to die. There was no need for Rodrigue to know that, and she would’ve been mortified if he felt obligated to put in his two cents about her internal struggles after letting such intimate information slip. _

_ “He is happy when he speaks of you, you know,” Rodrigue said, smiling. “Very few things can elicit simple pleasure these days, when the fates of many people’s lives are resting on your shoulders. But His Majesty finds simple pleasure when you are speaking to him, or he is speaking of you to others. For that, I thank you. He deserves to have the small pleasures a young man should enjoy, like first love.” _

_ “How did you--” Marianne blurted out, before immediately clasping her mouth shut. She shouldn’t have begun with an obvious statement that confirmed his suspicions. She should have made an attempt to deny it. Her adoptive father’s lessons on debate still have not taken root in her. _

_ Rodrigue chuckled. “I am very familiar with what love looks like on the face of a young man. I was His Majesty’s age when I realized I had fallen in love. Real love, not fits of infatuation or admiration mistaken for romantic love.” _

_ “Your wife?” Marianne asked. She did not know Rodrigue had met Felix’s mother around her age. _

_ Rodrigue’s expression briefly shifted to that of surprise, before smoothing over quickly with the grace one expected from a noble. _

_ “Er . . . . yes! My wife! She was a lovely woman. Strong and steel-willed. I must confess I was a tad afraid of her when my parents introduced us. She almost killed me when we first dueled together. But she also possessed a fierce loyalty to those she loved, loyalty so fierce that I was reminded of the founder of House Fraldarius. I believe both of my sons inherited all of her best traits.” _

_ Marianne’s throat went dry at the mention of Rodrigue’s sons. _

I’m afraid Felix inherited nothing of such loyalty.  _ The words were right on the tip of Marianne’s tongue, and she could be cruel and let them be spoken. If she were her adoptive father, she would have had enough mercilessness to. _

_ But she was not her adoptive father, and instead, she was ashamed to have ever thought such a thing. It was disgustingly rude. Unnecessarily vicious. It would have been beating down a man who was already carrying so many burdens. _

_ Marianne’s feelings regarding Felix were petty, but she was not petty enough to take it out on his father. _

_ “I believe you,” Marianne chose to respond instead. “I must confess I didn’t know your son very well back when we were classmates, but I knew him to be . . . . . very strong and confident.” _

_ “You do not have to speak of him like he is dead, Marianne,” Rodrigue said. Resignation marred the edges of his voice. “He is alive, and he is fighting for the emperor.” _

_ A dreadful silence fell over them, and Marianne’s blood went cold. Her heart beat wildly in her ribcage, while Rodrigue looked to be the picture of calmness. _

_ It was his son they were discussing, and yet it was Marianne feeling all of the anxiety and nerves. She feared that she had overstepped her bounds and all of her instincts were screaming at her to walk away, to retreat back into solitude and apologize to Rodrigue for disturbing his brooding. _

_ “I am so sorry for bringing him up! It was not necessary and I should’ve known better. Please forgive me and I’ll--” _

_ “Marianne, you do not need to apologize,” Rodrigue interrupted her. He smiled gently once more to reassure her. “I was already thinking of my son long before you arrived. It was actually the reason why I am out here, instead of slumbering in my bed. My family always did have a tendency to brood, I’m afraid.” _

_ “ . . . . . you must feel even more betrayed than Dimitri,” Marianne said softly. Though she had no sympathy for Felix, she couldn’t imagine being in Rodrigue’s shoes. Dimitri had grown up alongside Felix, but Rodrigue had raised him and nurtured him. He had held Felix in his arms when he first arrived into the world and now Felix’s death might be necessary to continue the preservation of the Kingdom. _

_ “My son never did anything by half measures,” Rodrigue said in a tone that was almost too light for Marianne’s liking. “There is no mistaking that if he is in the emperor’s army, then he truly believes in her rhetoric. I have known for a long time that our beliefs have clashed, but never in my life have I fathomed our paths would diverge so harshly. And since he has upheld his loyalty to the Empire for so long, then it must mean that he has considered the possibility that he would have to kill me to get through to Fhirdiad, kill His Majesty as well, and decided that he could live with it.” _

_ Marianne’s hands grasped the fabric of her dress in fistfuls, tight and angry. She counted silently in her head to calm herself. _

_ She really did dislike thinking of Felix and all the things he did to Dimitri. _

_ “My son has decided his path and committed to it,” Rodrigue continued, his expression unreadable. “If I truly want to honor him, then I will match his convictions. If I come across him when the Black Eagle Strike Force attacks Arianrhod, then I will see to his defeat myself.” _

_ “Are you going to kill him?” Marianne blurted out, unable to hold back the words in her throat. Such an idea frightened her. A father having to kill his own son . . . . . . it almost made her vomit in her mouth. _

_ Rodrigue showed no hint of horror or even regret. If anything, his eyes were filled with the same steel Marianne had seen all too frequently in his son before the monastery fell. _

_ The sight of him so calm when discussing something so grave and vile . . . . . it terrified Marianne. _

_ For all she disliked Felix, no one deserved to be killed by their own father. If such a fate befell Marianne, her last thoughts would be that of despair. _

_ She wondered if Felix would feel a similar despair if he fell by Rodrigue’s hands. _

_ “My son never did anything by half measures, so I must do the same if I want to respect his wishes. This may sound foreign to you, but I would only be disappointing my son if I went easy on him if we ever encountered each other on the battlefield. If he is truly prepared to kill me, then I must match him in turn. It is not malice that drives my actions, but duty and love for my country and king. Felix has always understood that those were the things I held closest to my heart.” _

So does that mean you admit that you hold those things closer to your heart than you do Felix? _ Marianne bleakly thought to herself. She will keep this thought unspoken. She does not wish to antagonize someone Dimitri cherished and looked up to. _

_ He said that he saw Rodrigue as a second father to him. Remembering that piece of information, Marianne could only wonder if that meant Felix saw Dimitri as a brother, and thus, his father choosing to not have any mercy for Felix after he betrayed Dimitri felt similar to the feeling of your father picking your sibling over you, rejecting you in the process. _

_ Marianne’s heart clenched tightly from within her chest. She had thought she had no sympathy for Felix, but it was unmistakably compassion that bled out from her. _

_ Dimitri would probably insist that this was evidence she was a good person. Marianne could only see this as evidence of her weakness. A sign that her convictions were not as strong as that of Rodrigue’s or Felix’s or even Dimitri’s. _

_ “So that is what I have decided to shirk sleep in order to brood over,” Rodrigue said in a disturbingly teasing tone. Rodrigue probably meant to comfort Marianne through such a tone, but Marianne found no comfort in his voice. Not anymore. “What keeps you up so late, young lady?” _

_ “ . . . . . I have been trying to think of what to say to someone I hold dear,” Marianne said as she decided to speak the truth, but vaguely. She did not trust Rodrigue with the depths of her heart. She wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to be alone with him ever again. “I have been keeping a secret from them, so I’ve been pacing back and forth trying to think of how to tell them. It might change our relationship forever, but I’m done stalling. I cannot keep this secret forever, after all.” _

_ Instinctively, Marianne’s hand drifted to her abdomen and Rodrigue’s sharp eye undeniably caught that small movement. Though Marianne did not divulge her truth verbally, Rodrigue connected it all in his head, and he looked at her with an almost palpable fondness. _

_ “If you truly hold them dear, I don’t believe there’s anything you can say to them that will make them turn against you. In fact, this might just be the greatest news you can give them.” _

_ “Do you believe that?” Marianne asked anxiously. _

_ “I do,” he answered. “Take it from an old man like me. We are living in a dark and bleak time, after all. He would be happy to hear such news from you.” _

_ Oh, now he wasn’t even hiding it anymore! _

_ “I promise I’ll tell him,” Marianne spoke, almost feeling a laugh burble up in her throat. It was strange that just a few moments ago, she felt afraid of Rodrigue in a way that was vastly different from the fear she felt regularly around others she did not trust. “I was . . . . I was just afraid of what the future would mean when I divulge this to him.” _

_ “I don’t believe you have anything to fear,” Rodrigue reassured her. He looked almost giddily happy himself. Marianne wondered if he survived the war and if her baby was to be born as next in line to the throne, would she see him more frequently in the future? Dimitri may insist that Rodrigue would be a part of the family they would make, may be a fixture in her child’s life as Rodrigue was a fixture in Dimitri’s life growing up. _

_ Marianne wondered if he would ever tell her child that he had a son once, too, one that he was forced to run through with a blade because of their differing beliefs, convictions they decided was worth staining their hands with their own kin’s blood. _

_ Deciding to keep herself from falling down that line of thought, Marianne bid Rodrigue farewell. She curtsied again out of instinct before leaving, and the act made Rodrigue chuckle a little. _

_ Towards the end of Lone Moon, Marianne confessed to Dimitri her pregnancy. While her mind imagined many different reactions from him, she did not expect him to be _ flustered _ , of all things. He  _ apologized _ for being responsible for her affliction, asked her if there’s anything he could to aid her, asked her what she wanted to do with the baby. _

_ “It would be a horrible thing to give birth in the middle of a war,” he said. “It would be even more risky to raise a child among such violence and bloodshed.” _

_ Marianne’s hand brushed against her abdomen again, and she thought about what she wanted. _

_ She still had reservations about what this could mean for her future. About what kind of parent she would be, what would the world look like when she gives birth, if the war would even be over by then.  _

_ She still had reservations about the possibility this would mean she is obligated to become queen if the Kingdom wins the war. _

_ But Dimitri had not rejected her when he learned of her pregnancy. Did not react with disgust when he learned she would bear his first child. _

_ She would not be alone if this baby was to be born. And she wouldn't be alone in raising it either. _

_ “It would be very risky if this child was to be born while a war was still raging on, but even so, I would still want for it to be born,” Marianne finally brought herself to say. “I spent so much of my life scared of my own body, but this might be the first beautiful thing my body has done. I mean, this baby must be beautiful, if it is yours as much as it is mine.” _

_ Dimitri brushed a hand against her cheek. “The baby would be beautiful because it would possess all of your best qualities. I sincerely believe that. I’ll make sure the war is over before it is to be born, Marianne. I swear that woman will be dead before she could ever bring harm to you or our child. I’ll tear her head off myself if it comes to that.”  _

_ Marianne did not know how to respond to that. Perhaps, in a sense, what Dimitri declared was romantic in a sense. It at least proved him to be a very protective father. But she wished he didn't bring up Edelgard or how eager he would be to kill her. _

_ Not that Marianne saw any hopes of a peaceful surrender from the emperor. She wasn't a fool. She simply worried for Dimitri every time he brought up death and bloodshed in a way that suggested it brought joy to him. Even worse when it sounded as if he would stain his hands red for  _ her _. _

_ She felt frightened of the possibility he was spending too much time with Rhea. _

_ Marianne still kissed him in response to his bloody declaration of protection. She still wanted to show gratitude for his devotion. _

_ But she shouldn’t have confessed at the end of the month, when the upcoming battle at Arianrhod was to occur. _

_ Because at the end of Lone Moon, the very next day after Marianne confessed she was pregnant, Arianrhod was laid to waste and conquered by the Black Eagle Strike Force. Those familiar red flags were raised upon what was once Faerghus's strongest fortress, the double-headed eagle of the Empire winking bright gold in the sunlight. An almost beautiful image, had it not depicted conquest. _

_ Rodrigue had died at Arianrhod, pierced through by a blade wielded by his own son. _

* * *

It was the ninth of the Ethereal Moon when Marianne felt it. A fierce kick from within, one that punched the breath out of her.

A feeling of something heavy dropped from inside of her and a scream pulled itself out from the depths of her throat.

“I think it’s coming,” Marianne whispered brokenly when her adoptive father came barging into her room, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

Mercedes’s arrival came not too long after, her voice soothing and calm as healing magic lit up her hands. The light shining from her fingers softened the pain of her child kicking and fighting from within her, but the pain remained regardless.

Marianne was taken to the birthing room that Edmund manor possessed from the moment it was built. Her adoptive father was born here, and so will Marianne’s child.

“Remember to breathe, Marianne,” Mercedes whispered, wiping a cloth against the woman’s forehead. Though her eyes were soft and comforting, Marianne could see the blonde woman's hands shake through the haze of pain and panic that blurred her senses. “Remember to breathe.”

The first contraction slammed into Marianne like an arrow slicing her flesh, and it was perhaps the worst pain she had ever felt in her life.

* * *

**_“Rodrigue . . . . I swear that I will not allow your death to be in vain. If I ever see Felix again, I will . . . . . I will . . . . .”_ **

**_“The scouts have just now returned. It seems the Imperial Army is marching towards the Kingdom capital. Are you certain about this, Dimitri? As king, do you think it wise to intercept them yourself?”_ **

**_“No need to worry yourself. Even if I am defeated, the Blaiddyd bloodline will live on.”_ **

* * *

_ It was a warm and humid night under Great Tree Moon when Dimitri drew Marianne out of her sleeping quarters. _

_ “Where are you taking me?” Marianne had whispered, voice still bleary and smudged with sleep. _

_ “Do not worry, beloved,” Dimitri whispered back, holding her hand like it was something precious and leading her outside. “This won’t take long.” _

_ The place he ended up drawing her towards was a dark spot not too far from Castle Fhirdiad. Underneath a tree, Dedue stood stiffly, looking rather awkward as he leafed through a small book Marianne recognized from church services. _

_ Annette and Ashe were also present. Ashe stood fidgeting, constantly fixing his sleeves, while Annette was beaming brightly, flowers adorning her hair and holding a wreath of white blossoms in her hands. _

_ “For the lucky bride,” she chirped as she threw the wreath on Marianne’s head. Belatedly, Marianne realized that similar flowers were also thrown around haphazardly among the tree branches and that everyone save herself was wearing clothing that looked slightly more elegant and formal than what they wore normally. _

_ “Is this--?” Marianne blurted out. _

_ "I wanted it to be a surprise," Dimitri said sheepishly, an almost boyish smile on his face. His expression then shifted to that of panic. "Oh dear, I guess I haven't considered whether or not you liked surprises. And weddings are something that should be planned, not immediately sprung on upon you . . . . ." _

_ His voice trailed off awkwardly, and Ashe and Annette began to look just as sheepish as the king. Dedue remained stoic, still apparently trying to memorize the vows an ordained minister is supposed to recite. _

_ "I-I'm sorry if I have offended you, Marianne! I just thought that, well, I should show how truly dedicated I am to having a future with you, but I understand if this is too audacious. I'll just walk you back to your room and--" _

_ "No, no! I love it! I really do." _

_ She meant it. It was such an endearing idea. It was true that Marianne disliked surprises, but this one had effort written all over it, and it was a small affair too. _

_ However, the sight of it still worried her. Just a few days ago, she and Dimitri discussed the possibility of her going home. _

_ Dimitri had wanted her to leave for Edmund immediately. Marianne argued against him that she could still be helpful to the sick and injured. Even before she fell pregnant, she never dared to wander onto a battlefield and arm herself. She had been scared that doing so would send the message to Margrave Edmund that his adoptive daughter was a traitor to his House. _

_ Marianne had asked him if he was desperate for her to leave before the Imperial Army reached Tailtean was because he expected they would be defeated. Dimitri had not answered her, only stared vacantly past her and then walked away. _

_ Her words must’ve brought up memories of Rodrigue. Marianne had profusely apologized to Dimitri the next time they saw each other, right after another meeting he had with Rhea and the Knights of Seiros, but he had acted as if their argument didn’t happen, only placate her with a kiss on the head and told her that she didn’t need to apologize for anything. _

_ And now he had thrown her a wedding. _

_ It was a sweet idea, but Marianne feared that this was another way for him to deflect her from discussing with him the Imperial Army. _

_ “I can’t believe I’m attending a royal wedding!” Annette squealed. “I mean, it’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be, and I’m a little sad Mercie isn’t here because we would’ve spent hours fussing over what to wear. Oh Saints, why did I bring up Mercie? Of course she isn’t here, she’s in the Imperial Army. Why did I bring up the Imperial Army? In front of His Majesty, no less? That’s not something you bring up on what’s supposed to be the happiest day of his life. Oh dear, now everyone is staring at me. Uhhhhhhh . . . . . . flower petals!” _

_ A fistful of white lily petals was thrown in Marianne’s and Dimitri’s faces. _

_ “Don’t worry, Annette, this isn’t an actual wedding,” Dimitri said after spitting out a petal that landed in his mouth. “When we defeat that woman and her army at Tailtean, I’ll be sure to give Marianne an official ceremony afterwards.” _

_ “So you really mean it?” Marianne turned to say to Dimitri. “After the war is won, you’ll make me your queen?” _

_ She was still trying to make herself comfortable at the idea of her sitting on a throne. Still trying to convince herself that she was not a monster just because the first bearer of her Crest had transformed into one and slaughtered thousands. _

_ (There were still reports of a wandering beast in Edmund and Marianne has not been there in months. That had to be proof she wasn’t the culprit, that had to be.) _

_ “I would be the luckiest man in the world if you ruled with me by my side,” Dimitri said earnestly, and Marianne was tempted to forget all of her grievances with him right there and then if she weren’t stubborn. His words still brought a flush to cheeks regardless. “I swear it is not because you’re bearing my child, but because I would be miserable marrying anyone else.” _

_ “ . . . . . . I would be miserable marrying anyone else too,” Marianne admitted softly. _

_ It was true. She had spent her whole life expecting that she would be married off for the benefits of House Edmund. Ever since she was adopted by Margrave Edmund, the word “husband” brought to her mind a shadowy stranger who would demand children out of her until she gave birth to one that bore her Crest, her curse. And though perhaps Dimitri wouldn’t have arranged this if she wasn’t pregnant, he didn’t want their child only because of Crests. He would not demand her to be an heir-making vessel. He had told her over and over again that he loved her, saved her life, even. There was no doubt in her mind that they truly, mutually adored each other.  _

_ Dimitri being her husband would bring her so much joy. _

_ “You would make an amazing queen,” Dimitri whispered to her as he planted a kiss on top of her head and pulled out a softly glittering ring. “I watched my father propose to my stepmother with this. I can’t think of anything better to give to you as I ask you to be my wife.” _

_ “I’m so honored, Dimitri. I only wish I had a ring to give to you.” _

_ “Like I said, this isn’t a real wedding. This is only for decorum. Once the war is over, you can give as many rings as you like.” _

_ Briefly, Marianne mulled over the possibility of giving Dimitri her father’s ring before remembering the conversation they had about her leaving. _

_ If Dimitri was truly confident he would kill Edelgard at Tailtean, he wouldn’t think to arrange this at all, would he? The only reason this wedding ceremony was put together was in case the Kingdom was defeated at Tailtean the way they were defeated at Arianrhod.  _

_ In case Dimitri was killed by the Imperial Army just like Rodrigue. _

_ Marianne could accuse him right now if she wished to. She could ruin this party that her friends had worked so hard to arrange for her and ask Dimitri right now if he expected to die at Tailtean when the end of the month comes. _

_ Instead, she let the words die at the back of her throat and fastened on a smile. Clutched onto the bouquet Annette had given to her tightly and with all of her might, imagined she was in a world where the war wasn’t happening, a world where the threat of death did not loom heavily over the man she loved most. A world where this was her actual wedding.  _

_ She understood why Dimitri was doing this. She wanted to pretend, too. _

_ “Let’s get on with this wedding, shall we?” Ashe said cheerily. “No more thinking of the war or who’s not here or what could’ve been. Let’s be happy with what we have right now.” _

_ “Yeah!” Annette said as she pumped a fist in the air. “Maybe Mercie and Felix can’t be here like I want them to be here, but at least we didn’t invite my father!” _

_ Annette’s eyes grew wide when it finally seemed to catch up to her what just came out of her mouth, and she scrambled quickly with another apology ready at the tip of her tongue, before Dimitri laughed, loudly and full-bodied, nothing like the polite chuckle Marianne had heard countless times before. _

_ “You’re right, Annette,” Dimitri said, wiping a tear out his eye as he finished laughing. “It is good we didn’t invite him. I want this to be a  _ happy _ affair, after all.” _

_ If they really were in a world where the war wasn’t looming over them like a heavy cloud, Marianne would’ve laughed too. She wanted to laugh very badly. She wished she could feel the simple, uncomplicated happiness a bride was supposed to feel. _

_ But instead, she cleared the doubt clouding her thoughts, banished it to the back of her head and tried to flash a smile a queen-to-be would. _

_ Underneath a tree that dripped with strings of white lilies, Dimitri slipped his stepmother’s ring onto Marianne’s finger and kissed the back of her hand before kissing her forehead, her nose, and then finally, her mouth. _

_ “I swear that I will never let any harm befall you, beloved. I truly meant that,” Dimitri murmured quietly into her hair. Before he pulled back, he whispered even more softly in a tone that was inaudible to all but Marianne. “I swear I will kill her. I will kill her not just for my family and for Glenn, but for you too, my love. For our child. For so long, I thought I only killed for the dead, but you reminded me that I can defend the living, too. No matter who I must face at the end of the month, I’ll kill them all to protect the future I want with you.” _

_ Dimitri finally pulled back to cup Marianne’s face in his hands. He held her like she was something delicate and fragile. _

_ “Because of you, I can yearn for the future. And I’ll kill anyone who will get in the way of it.” _

_ And perhaps this was what you got when you threw a wedding two weeks before the groom was supposed to march towards an invading army. Or what you got when you wed someone who was taught that dying for one another was romantic and that in order to become an adult, you must know how to kill. Or Dimitri was simply saving his most romantic words for when their actual wedding was to be thrown, whenever that was supposed to happen or if it’ll happen at all. _

_ Marianne should’ve been frightened then. But she wasn’t. She felt sorry for her husband (if she was allowed to call him such, but she wore his stepmother’s ring, so that must count for something) and she felt bitter, vicious anger towards Rhea, who must’ve put all of these thoughts in his head, or encouraged them, at least. But she did not feel frightened to be this man’s wife. _

_ Whether that meant her love was true or that this war has been going on for far too long, Marianne didn’t know. _

* * *

Marianne did not remember much of what her daughter’s birth was like. Only that it was one of the most physically painful experiences of her life, if not the  _ most _ painful, and that when her water broke, it was almost noon, and when it was all over, she could see the sky turn red outside the window.

Childbirth was not the beautiful thing Marianne read about in stories. In fact, most of the experience was the labor it took to push her daughter out, and the actual birth was quick. The hours of pain were unfortunately what Marianne remembered most.

After the baby was born, Marianne’s body still aches in all of the worst places and she was bleeding heavily. Mercedes warned her of such early on, but it was still an uncomfortable feeling.

Once the world became clear to her again, the first thing Marianne did was panic that her child wasn’t immediately in her arms.

“Don’t worry, she’s right here,” Mercedes said, hushing Marianne’s pleas. “It’s a little girl! Isn’t that wonderful? What was the name you said was perfect if it turned out to be a girl?”

“Anastasia,” her adoptive father answered for her. His face was still pale and his hands were still shaking, but there was undeniable joy in his eyes when he looked upon the bundle in Mercedes’s arms. There was evidence of tears that were hastily wiped away that still marked his cheeks. “You said that you wanted the baby to be named Anastasia, if it was a girl.”

Marianne could only nod. She wanted her baby in her arms. She wanted to hold onto her daughter. Her body felt empty without her child within her, so she needed to hold her now that she was finally born.

She needed to hold Anastasia.

Anastasia was carefully transferred into Marianne’s arms, Mercedes softly chiding her and arranging her arms so Anastasia could be held correctly. 

It was not a small beast that Marianne held. No fur, no claws, no sharp fangs. Anastasia was pink and smooth-skinned, covered in peach-colored fuzz and still softly crying from the ordeal of her coming into the world.

“She was screaming at the top of her lungs when she was born,” Mercedes told her. “You probably couldn’t hear because you were screaming just as loud, if not louder.”

Physically, Marianne felt awful. Sweat still clung onto her skin everywhere, and she was now reminded of the feeling of blood seeping out from between her legs that she hadn’t felt in nine months.

Anastasia’s crying began to rise in volume again, and Marianne brushed back the blankets framing her daughter’s face to take a good look at her.

She was a delicate, wrinkly thing. A pale pink color after all of the blood had finally been washed off of her. She smelled clean, if only because Mercedes had bathed her before Marianne became coherent enough to demand to hold her daughter.

It was hard to tell if she looked like Marianne or Dimitri or both because she hardly looked anything beyond helpless and fragile and so  _ delicate _ .

Marianne did not give birth to a beast like she feared. She had given birth to a healthy baby girl.

She was beautiful, so beautiful. It was illogical to think such a thing, when there was nothing about Anastasia that really distinguished her from other newborn babies. But she was a  _ living thing, _ created by Marianne’s own body, something that Marianne had thought of as wretched for all of her life.

She was a living creature that both Dimitri and Marianne created. A human being. Looking at her, Marianne was tempted to believe she was human too, if her body had managed to create Anastasia. 

She wondered if Dimitri would’ve been convinced of his humanity too, if he could cradle Anastasia in his arms. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter took so long to finally be finished but at least Part I of this story is done! Welcome to the world, Anastasia von Edmund! If you're wondering why I chose Anastasia of all names, it's because I named her after the main character from the Anastasia musical, who's long lost royalty. Get it? Plus, her name is Russian just like her father's!
> 
> It takes almost 30k words for the baby the fic is supposed to be about to finally be born but next chapter is going to a brief interlude about Dimitri's estranged childhood friends! Fun! We'll be popping in to see how they're coping with their life decisions! We're also gonna pretend Dorothea/Ingrid and Sylvain/Bernadetta had A-Supports and endings with each other because fanfic is all about filling in all the areas where canon disappointed you.
> 
> I'll also be getting to write my beloved mess that is CF Felix Hugo Fraldarius. Fun!
> 
> Please leave a comment if you can! It keeps me going while I'm living through the ordeal that is being an American citizen in 2020. Hope you have a lovely day!


	5. stalwart knight, sincerest of knights, meandering sword

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for mentions of violence and death. I promised in the beginning that I would never depict a character onscreen dying and I'm sorry that I must break that promise several months later. If you're an Annette fan, I advise you not read the first flashback scene.

It was a disgusting thing to think, but fighting the second war against those who slither in the dark (was that seriously the only name Hubert came up with?) was much easier than the first war because Sylvain didn’t have to think of the enemy as human.

The information he was given about them was frustratingly limited. They apparently looked like that because they lived underground for a thousand years, hiding away from the Church’s eyes (Sylvain had tried to argue that the Abyssians were subjected to similar living conditions and Constance certainly wasn’t ghost white and veiny, but Ingrid cut off his questions with a kick to the shin) and they were responsible for countless atrocities across Fodlan and they  _ also  _ were masterful face stealers, snatching identities like Tomas and one of the empire lords and even  _ Cornelia _ .

(No wonder she didn’t seem to shiver at all during Fhirdiad winters, even in that get up of hers. One mystery thirteen-year-old Sylvain pondered was finally solved.)

But yeah. After defeating the enormous dragon that turned out to be the secret shadow ruler of Fodlan, the Black Eagle Strike Force were now aiming the tip of their blade at the secret society of vampirically pale mole people that were also pulling puppet strings throughout Fodlan’s history books.

At least the mole people weren’t wearing familiar faces. Sylvain could cleave them in half with the Lance of Ruin (why was he still carrying that?) easily.

Knowing that there was more fighting to be done, Felix remained. But he looked restless, pale with disturbingly dark shadows growing under his eyes. Sylvain would approach him, but every time he dared to, Felix would stare at him like it was unnatural for him to be concerned about one of his oldest friends and ask him if he wanted to spar. If Sylvain refused and told him he simply wanted to talk, then Felix would walk away. He was entirely disinterested in any conversation if it wasn't about the next battle to be fought or how he could improve upon his skills.

“Well, that’s rude,” Dorothea said bluntly upon hearing out Sylvain’s grievances. “And here I thought there could’ve been something deeper under that snarling facade. Someone potentially sensitive and charming. But it looks like I expected too much from heirs of lords and dukes.”

“ _ Hey _ ,” Sylvain replied in a tone that would’ve sounded teasing if he wasn’t so tired. “Felix and I aren’t going to inherit anything, you know. We’ve come  _ way _ too far for that to be a possibility in our futures.”

“Lots of lords think they’re going to keep their position if they grovel a little at Edie’s feet,” Dorothea retorted. Sylvain a few years ago would’ve been enticed by that fire in her voice, would've labeled her as  _ feisty  _ and  _ challenging  _ in his head. “Besides, it’s not like I’m unfamiliar with the idea of heirs offing their parents when they get impatient for nature to take its course.”

“That’s not the reason why we pledged allegiance to Her Majesty,” Sylvain said, deftly sidestepping the mention of murdered fathers and the image of his old man’s blood staining the tip of the Lance of Ruin in his memory’s eye.

“Oh really?” Dorothea’s eyebrows hitched slightly at that. Even after all of these years, she still erected a wall between her and him.

“You don’t interrogate Ingrid like this, I’m sure,” Sylvain countered, and he could hear bitterness leak into his voice once the words were out his mouth. He was careful to scale it back once he followed it up with, “I’m starting to think you have a bit of bias.”

“Perhaps I do,” Dorothea sighed, like she was waiting for him to walk away any moment now. “Funny how a whole childhood forced to scrape and beg before noblemen and an adolescence of being leered at like a doll on display makes you realize you want your adulthood to be different. It’s a new world now, Sylvain. I don’t have to entertain men like you just to not go hungry anymore.”

“I think we could be really great friends if you stopped being so cold. I don’t intend to interfere with whatever courtship is going on between you and Ingrid.”

“Oh, but being cold is so fun,” Dorothea said with a devilish smirk. Sylvain couldn’t help it, he smiled too. Even when he was being cut down like this, talking to her was entertaining. She saw right through him and gave him no sympathy for it. In another world, he would’ve fallen in love. “Let me be cold for just a little while longer.”

So that was that. If Sylvain wanted comfort, he should look elsewhere. Mercedes would’ve been a good shoulder to cry on, but she was gone. She didn’t regret trading allegiances, not one bit, but she told Sylvain that she had a promise to honor. She didn’t divulge to him what the promise was exactly, though. Sylvain could only hope it involved punching her adoptive father off of a pier. She deserved that much.

A few years ago, he would’ve immediately ran to Ingrid under the guise of needing her help to clean up his messes, but it seemed as if Ingrid was finally tired of that routine. In fact, she seemed to stop seeing herself responsible for his and Felix’s messes and left them to reap the consequences of their actions, no matter how cruel.

She started being more comfortable in the presence of other women. It wasn’t until now that Sylvain realized how little interaction Ingrid had with other girls her age that weren’t related to her in the past. He wondered if he helped isolate her somehow, kept her stuck in a circle with only him and Felix and Dimitri, and if she was deprived of something vital as a result. He wondered if she resented him for it.

Well. He's glad she's making more friends outside of him. He could only wish he was better at doing such things himself.

Sylvain had a lot of time to reflect after the Church of Seiros fell and Emperor Edelgard was declared ruler of Fodlan. Mostly that his father was dead and that was definitely Sylvain’s fault, as he helped lead a battalion invading Gautier territory.

Less frequently, but still clouded his mind just as heavily, that Dimitri was dead and while that was probably  _ less  _ Sylvain’s fault, since Professor Byleth decided Felix should have the first strike against the Tempest King and the two estranged friends had a somber conversation about what happened between them over the last five years (like something out of Ingrid’s storybooks). While Sylvain never even got close enough to the fallen king on the battlefield to see the life drain out of his eyes, the sight of the man slumped over the ground in a pool of his own blood certainly loved to feature itself in his nightmares from time to time.

Nevertheless, what's done was done. And Sylvain can never take it back.

(At least the new nightmares about fire and bloodshed and Dimitri gasping his last words in the rain replaced the ones of Miklan screaming his name, that it was his fault he was like this, that he had no choice but to turn into a monster, that his life took the turn that it did.)

In the corner of his eye, he saw Bernadetta. He remembered how she used to stand back during their academy days: curled in on herself, like a wilted plant. Now she stood with both of her feet firmly planted on the ground, shoulders straight and eyes forward. Like a sunflower that finally tilted its head upwards, towards the sky.

She was fixing her bowstring, so focused on the task before her that she didn't notice Sylvain staring.  _ Sylvain  _ didn't even realize he was staring, but once his mind caught up to him, he felt the urge to look away, like he was somehow committing a crime for simply beholding Bernadetta.

He wasn't looking at her like that. People would probably assume he was, though. And he couldn't fault them for it, since he helped cultivate that image.

He couldn't remember trying to make Bernadetta see him that way, not even during school. In fact, he completely forgot to regard her as a potential conquest during those carefree days. He was so fascinated by her ability to write that he never once flirted with her. Never even dropped one of his famous pick up lines!

. . . . . . Saints, he revealed to her that he liked reading! She knew too much about him!

He didn’t know what kept him rooted to the ground right then and there. Bernadetta wasn’t stunning, not like Dorothea or Petra at least. Sylvain five years ago would’ve described her as  _ pretty  _ and  _ obviously screaming self-esteem issues _ . Sylvain five years ago would’ve regarded her as  _ easy pickings _ .

He didn’t need Ingrid anymore to remind him how ashamed he should be of having such thoughts, of having once been that kind of person who regarded women in such a light. Saints, he hated the person he was five years ago  _ while he was still that person _ .

The person he is now? He doesn’t know. A person who after helping kill his brother helped kill his father? And after that, helped kill one of friends who looked up to him in his youth? Had the audacity to stand next to and then still speak to the person who swung the executioner’s blade?

Perhaps he sorted out his complicated feelings towards women (still undeniably attracted to, even if not exclusively like he previously thought), but he was still a terrible person. Even Sylvain five years ago would’ve punched and screamed at him. That was perhaps what hurt the most.

“Sylvain?” a soft, high-pitched voice spoke, jostling Sylvain out of his thoughts.

Forced to look up, he saw that he was face to face with Bernadetta, the very woman he was beholding just a few seconds ago.

“Bernadetta!” he slid on his confident voice like a well-worn jacket. “It’s rare for you to be the one to seek  _ me  _ out! The beautiful wallflower is climbing out of the shadows, huh? It feels like yesterday I was dead-set on chasing you for the next chapter of your thrilling adventure story!”

He didn’t know why he was phrasing the story like he was stalking her. He sounded like a creep, he should backtrack, he should apologize for making Bernadetta uncomfortable when she probably only spoke to him to tell him to stop staring at her, he should--

“H-Huh? Oh, I remember now!” Bernadetta blurted out after a lengthy pause. She looked less skittish than Sylvain expected. Less likely to go running in the other direction at any moment. “Um . . . . I guess I’m happy you thought it was thrilling? I truthfully can’t recall what you said about it, though . . . . it was a long time ago, and I was a completely different person back then . . . .”

“Oh, then forget about it!” Sylvain said nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders. “I was different back then, too. I must’ve caused you great distress, though, and I apologize for that.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Bernadetta said with a pout. Her eyebrows were adorably scrunched together. “If anything,  _ I _ was probably the one causing distress. If you have time, I could probably find that book you read and see if you still like it? Most of the work I haven’t tossed into a fireplace out of embarrassment has been heavily edited. Much more grounded in reality now, I think. I would love some constructive criticism?”

Sylvain had to keep his face taut in order for his jaw to not drop. Was this the same Bernadetta who scurried away from every group conversation she was involved in once it was over? It was true that they hadn’t spoken much since he tried to compliment her work through a letter, but how had he missed out on such a huge transformation?

“Wow, uh . . . . .” the words couldn’t flow out properly from his mouth. He wasn’t even sure if he knew what he was going to say. “You’ve . . . . . . uh . . . . . .”

“Also, Felix is in the training yard again, isn’t he?” she interrupted him, which was great because it kept him from continuing to flounder like a dead fish. “Is he busy? I need to speak with him. Really badly, actually. His behavior as of late has been concerning me.”

“Whoa, slow down!” Sylvain said, fixing another carefree smile on his face. Now his confident voice came back to him. “Since when were you so chummy with my best friend? I feel a little betrayed that Felix never told me about you! After all, I’ve been waiting all of my life for him to finally get a girlfriend and maybe pull that stick out of his ass.”

“H-Huh? You and Felix are best friends? Oh . . . . I think I did overhear Ingrid tell Dorothea that the three of you were like siblings growing up. From what I’ve seen, though, Felix doesn’t seem all that close to either of you.”

Okay, now that fucking stung. You could do a lot of things to Sylvain Jose Gautier, say a lot of things to him, but to imply that his oldest friends no longer cared about him was like going straight for the heart, digging for blood.

(Dimitri didn’t seem to have a thing to say to him at Tailtean, not even when he used the Lance of Ruin to slaughter Kingdom soldiers.)

“Hahahaha . . . . well, Felix never liked to talk much about his past to new friends. But yeah, we used to be super close as kids. In fact, we made a promise to die together on the same day when I was, like, ten.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a promise a ten-year-old would make,” Bernadetta remarked, completely oblivious the merciless torture she was inflicting on his heart. “But I’m not his girlfriend. I don’t know why you would assume such a thing.”

A flush broke out on Bernadetta’s face, staining her pale cheekbones scarlet. A feeling of endearment welled up in Sylvain’s throat, not jealousy like he expected. Maybe it was because it was Bernadetta, specifically. He couldn’t imagine having any negative feelings towards Bernadetta.

“Sure, sure. Well, I would be happy to point you in Felix’s direction but he’s got battle on the mind. He doesn’t care for anyone to approach him if they don’t want to spar.

“Then I guess I have to spar with him,” Bernadetta sighed, making the move to walk away before Sylvain’s hand reached out for her forearm.

“Wait! Just w-w-wait . . . . did you not hear what I said? Or what you just said? Since when were you as serious about training as Felix?”

“Oh no, I hate training,” Bernadetta said as she shook off the point of contact between their bodies. “In fact, I don’t intend to go anywhere near a bow and arrow ever again once peace is ensured in Fodlan. But as long as there’s still a war, I should still keep at it, even if I hate it. And besides, this isn’t for my sake. It’s for Felix’s. If he won’t talk to me if I’m not holding a weapon, then I’ll hold a weapon. I’m really scared about him, okay? He hasn’t been seeming . . . . right, lately.”

“Yeah, he hasn’t,” Sylvain sighed, dragging a hand over his face. He felt frustration wash over him, hot and stale and uncomfortable. He knew exactly what was dwelling on Felix’s mind, knew exactly why it was haunting him, and yet, he didn’t have the courage to confront it, or even tell other people like Bernadetta so they could help Felix in his stead.

Only he and Ingrid knew how dear His Highness was to Felix before the Western Rebellion. No one who hadn't known Felix before the Tragedy would believe them, though. From their perspective, it looked like Felix just hated the man, plain and simple, nothing but contempt and disgust. But it was more complicated than that. Fuck, Sylvain couldn’t even comprehend it, probably because he didn’t bother to fucking ask. It had been so jarring to see Felix act like that, when he had once clung to the prince’s arm and got so possessive over him that he felt threatened by his own brother and father. Of course Sylvain wanted to force the two of them into a room together and have a proper conversation. But he hadn’t wanted to rock the boat. He didn’t want to give Felix any reason to resent him even more.

He couldn’t confront Felix to call him out on his shit then, so how could he ever think he would be able to even scratch the surface of what Felix must be feeling now?

Somehow, even Ingrid, Ingrid who fussed over them like a mother hen because someone probably put it in her head that she was responsible for the actions of the men around her, seemingly gave up on Felix after one too many snappish confrontations. And Sylvain didn’t have the right to call her out on that, because he was tired, too. He understood her frustration. 

It’s not like either of them knew how to sort out their baggage regarding Dimitri, either. It was like asking a murderer if they had any right to mourn their victims. But maybe that was overdramatic. Sylvain wasn’t the one who dropped the executioner’s blade on Dimitri’s head.

“I just really hope he doesn’t think this war is another excuse to hurt himself,” Bernadetta murmured, looking out toward the direction where the training yard was, still not moving yet to run to Felix’s side like she should be.

“Me too,” Sylvain sighed helplessly.

* * *

_ Fhirdiad was on fire. Sylvain remembered running down the streets of this city, the soles of his shoes slapping against cobblestones. He remembered chasing Ingrid’s blonde head as she raced towards the nearest food stall that would offer free samples. He remembered finding Felix sobbing behind a barrel, knees touching his forehead, because he caught Dimitri talking to Glenn and that meant Dimitri didn’t love him anymore and he’s going to be replaced by his brother as the prince’s best friend. He remembered begging Dimitri to tell him who the identity of Dagger Girl was as they were out buying gifts for his stepmother’s birthday, that he could totally keep a secret, cross his heart and hope to die. _

_ He remembered this city so clearly in his mind’s eye and it was currently on fire. _

_ Annette once talked about how it was her dream for her family to be reunited in Fhirdiad, to return her father home to her mother. The same woman now stood amidst tall plumes of flames, completely deaf to the ears of screaming villagers as she wove another spell into the air. _

_ Sylvain would’ve been knocked off of his horse had Felix not taken the blow for him. He didn’t get a chance to thank Felix out loud for his act of service, probably the first nice thing he had done for him since Arianrhod, because immediately after taking the hit for Sylvain, Felix lunged forward, not even sparing a glance to who it was on the other end of his blade, and plunged his sword into Annette’s chest. _

_ For a moment, it looked as if Annette had some final words to say before dying far from where her father stood in the burning city, but that must’ve been a hallucination on Sylvain’s part. The wound Felix inflicted on her was too deep. She would've died immediately. _

* * *

After losing someone as dear to her as Glenn at such a young age, too young of an age to fully comprehend grief, Ingrid thought she would be able to bear the burden of grief more gracefully in her later years.

That was a mistake for her to make. She shouldn't have thought such a thing. As if she would've been able to shoulder this new grief better, not when she still hasn't fully comprehended the depth of her feelings towards Glenn.

(Once upon a time, she had thought she would've been happy to be his wife. She thought she would've been happy to tie herself to him and carry the duty of marriage with him without a complaint. But now she was an adult, and once she looked back on her childhood memories from a new angle, she realized she only tolerated the idea because Glenn didn't laugh at her dreams and was willing to take her seriously during training practice, but he had taken everyone seriously when it came to training, including Sylvain, who clearly wasn't trying. She had fantasized about taking down a Demonic Beast with him, but never waking up in bed next to him, never sharing moments of peace with him.)

What were her feelings towards Dimitri? For one thing, she wished they were able to save him. Edelgard despised Rhea and she despised those who slither, but she regarded Dimitri with indifference at best. They could've talked him down. They could've been civil.

Edelgard believed in a just world for those who were weak and helpless. So did Dimitri. Ingrid wanted to believe they would have reached a common ground in a kinder world.

Ingrid also knew Glenn had died for him and she told Dimitri as such, in that last conversation they had before Ingrid told him she was going to transfer to the Black Eagles.

Of course, she didn't transfer because she had one bad confrontation with him. That would've been childish and shallow. But now that Dimitri was dead, and Ingrid saw his dying moments with her own eyes, she wished she could go back in time to that haunting memory and tell Dimitri she shouldn't have snapped at him, even if his words had sounded cruel to her then. They had both deeply cherished Glenn, and it was wrong for her to invalidate his feelings because they threatened her fragile worldview. She realized now that she was in the wrong, that Glenn had died an unfair death, at too young of an age, and Dimitri was too young to have witnessed it with his own eyes.

What cruel, bitter irony. Glenn had died unfairly. Dimitri died as a sacrifice for Rhea's own ends.

But what was worse was that while Ingrid ultimately will never know who killed Glenn, she did, however, know who killed Dimitri. She saw it with her own eyes. She would never be able to forget it.

She still spoke to the guilty party, in a frightfully casual manner, too. Ingrid wasn't even sure she could bring herself to be angry. It was easier to say Dimitri died through Rhea's negligence and his own stubbornness. It removed the element of guilt, the feeling like her old friend's blood somehow stained her hands even though she wasn’t the one who dealt the final blow.

How does one confront a complicated grief such as this? How does one even begin to unravel it?

And if Ingrid's grief was complicated, then Felix's would be a puzzle no one would ever hope to solve. In fact, simply looking upon Felix made Ingrid feel as if she didn't have the right to grieve, not when Felix practically looked like a ghost.

She didn't know a single thing she could say to him. From an outside perspective, she must've looked cruel, avoiding him the way she did, but every time she dared approach him, he glared at her as if she was worsening his mood by simply being near. This wasn't at all like his irritability five years ago; it was a new sort of anger entirely. Completely uncharted territory.

Ingrid didn't know how to describe it, but it was like Felix became feral. Lived only by animal instincts instead of human feelings. He went through the motions of sleeping, waking up, eating, and training, but elsewhere, he wasn't mentally present. Ingrid had once tried to speak to him during those moments, but she was met with a growling ferocity that seemed determined to attack her in all of her most vulnerable areas until she snapped and lost her temper.

And she did lose her temper. Over and over again. Felix was one of her oldest friends, so of course he knew her well. He knew how to say all of the right things to make her snap at him and stomp away. And Ingrid was helpless to fall for it every time.

The last time they spoke, Ingrid was chastising Felix for continuing to slash and hack at an Agarthan who was already well on his way to bleeding to death. She wanted to vomit once she realized what exactly he was doing. She felt no sympathy for the Agarthan, but what Felix was inflicting upon them essentially amounted to torture. What the Strike Force set out on doing was eliminate those who slither, not make art of their entrails.

Ingrid had only thought Felix was merely out of it, and a good scolding would bring him to clarity. She knew he was not like this in his nature, that he was a kind soul at heart who was disgusted by unnecessary violence, thought of those who took pleasure in bloodshed as inhuman. Was that not what made up his core principles, what defined him as a person? What he was doing now was simply just not him.

But Felix had turned his head towards her to reveal an ugly scowl, one that was smeared with blood at the edges, blood that was clearly not his.

"This is what your precious knights knew how to do best, Ingrid. This is what all of us eventually learn if we wish to be strong. This is what Glenn would've eventually learned if he had survived and continued down the path he was going. If all of our childhood heroes, if even _Annette_ _and_ _Ashe_ , can set Fhirdiad ablaze without batting an eye, then what hopes do we have to not end up that way as well? This is what we will all devolve into, Ingrid. We were poisoned the moment they made us carry blades as we learned how to walk."

And like a coward, Ingrid had shrunk away from him. She did not know what to say to him. She wasn't even sure if that was Felix,  _ her  _ Felix. She was almost tempted to run to Edelgard and Hubert and ask them if it was possible that the Agarthans have employed their face-snatching sorcery upon the Strike Force.

But that was a childish thing to hope for. That man she saw was undeniably Felix. No one else could copy his various mannerisms so seamlessly like him and those who slither had already proven to be terrible actors anyway.

Faintly, Ingrid remembered how hysterical Felix had been when he had returned from his first mission as a squire with Dimitri, how he pointed at the crown prince and claimed that the boy had stolen the face of his best friend.

How horrible were all the adults around him to dismiss his feelings so callously at the time and how cruel of Ingrid to only understand what Felix had felt then several years too late. That feeling of betrayal and distraught that you didn't know a close friend as well as you thought you did and the realization that you were now, undeniably, terrified of the person they had evolved into.

And because she realized she was frightened of Felix, she began to distance herself from Sylvain as well. She felt terrified that any conversation she would have with him now would only end up drifting towards Felix, or Dimitri, or their dead fathers.

(She knew full well her father was where she got her stubbornness from. She knew full well that if he decided that the Kingdom was worth defending to his dying breath, then nothing would make him abandon such allegiances. Not even the chance to save his own life. Not even the chance to reunite with his daughter. He was so stubborn that he still believed Ingrid to still be that daughter who wished to be dutiful to him, to repay him for all of his sacrifices. He believed her position in the emperor's army only meant she was brainwashed, a poor damsel held captive by a mad heretic and her sycophants. He couldn't comprehend the idea of his daughter wishing for anything that her family hadn't already written out for her. He clung onto that false image of his daughter until the very end.) 

Ingrid, in the end, proved herself to be everything she feared: a terrible knight, a terrible daughter, and a terrible friend. She had spent the whole of her youth defining herself by these three things and now that she was without them, she feared that she was now nothing.

(How much of her life had been defined by the men in her life? Her promises to serve Dimitri as his loyal knight, her duty as her father's sole child with a Crest that could save Galatea, her constant support of her childhood friends that always expected her to come running when they got in trouble? Did those things make up the whole of her identity? Would her dreams of being a knight even exist if she had never looked up to Glenn?)

Dorothea still apparently found her good company, for reasons Ingrid could not fathom. To this day, she wondered how she had not ruined this friendship of theirs because of her own awkward fumbling, completely out of her depth as she never had a female friend her age before.

And Dorothea was nice. She was sweet. She was really good at singing. Her perfume smelled of gentle lilac. Ingrid liked how pretty her jewelry looked on her, even if she never wished to wear such things herself. She admired Dorothea's beauty in a way that was completely divorced from expected jealousy. She just thought Dorothea was a really lovely looking woman. 

That wasn't weird, right? Ingrid felt weird. She felt things she was completely unfamiliar with when she was around Dorothea. It was a strangeness that made her skin prickle and her chest feel tight, but not in an unpleasant way.

Ingrid really hoped this wasn't weird. Especially after that incident of Dorothea wanting to put makeup on her back when they were classmates. She never wanted a repeat of that awkwardness ever again.

"Would you laugh at me if I told you I used to think Felix was a viable husband back when we were all attending class in the monastery?" Dorothea asked Ingrid one day as they passed through the training yard, walking past Felix, who was apparently busy being occupied by Bernadetta. It sounded like they were having an intense conversation, but it also sounded like Felix was only participating out of politeness, however capable he was of that these days.

"W-W-What?" If there was water in Ingrid's mouth, she would've sprayed it out.

"He's handsome in a sharp way, and his family is unreasonably wealthy," Dorothea continued in an almost clinical tone. "He would've kept me secure for the rest of my life. His personality was a piece of work, but I thought I would've easily matched him blow for blow if I were his wife. I'm not a doormat, after all. I wouldn't have tolerated him mistreating me. But the man I see now can only invoke pity in me at best. I wouldn't want a future with him. I see now that he's obsessed with violence. He doesn't know how to act in times of peace. And I don't want to live the rest of my life as a soldier. I never want to hurt or maim another life ever again. I fear Felix finds pleasure in that."

"He used to speak of His High-- _ Dimitri _ , in such a way," Ingrid responded, after an awkward beat of silence. "I always thought he disliked unnecessary violence, but now he speaks as if he cannot live his life as anything but a blade. I don't think he ever understood the hypocrisy of that."

Dorothea wrinkled her nose. "So that's the kind of man he is. I should've known. I'm glad I decided I liked you the best out of everyone from the Blue Lions. You're much more charming and gentlemanly than any other suitor that has knocked on my door."

Ingrid's heart kicked fast in her chest, preventing her from giving a proper response beyond a flush and a murmured "thank you."

How blasphemous of her to still feel warmth and happiness when Dimitri was dead and buried. What a terrible daughter she is for still being capable of a smile when half of her family died in the war and the other half refused to talk to her. What a horrible friend she was for making more connections outside of her former circle when Felix was spiraling towards somewhere dark and she was helpless to pull him back.

Had she sworn allegiance to the Kingdom, she would've deigned to never feel happiness again after the death of her liege. She would've spent the rest of her life lambasting herself before the goddess, whipping herself over and over in her own mind. 

But in this world, Ingrid had no liege, not even Edelgard or Dorothea. The goddess probably wouldn't listen to her if she prayed. Perhaps she never did.

Happiness was a strange thing to feel after surviving something you never thought would end. Was Ingrid a sinner for being able to feel it, and to wish to feel it again and again until the cloak of grief no longer felt like a coat she has already worn several times?

* * *

_ The battle ended after the dragon fell. It was absurd and most definitely morbid to some degree, but Ingrid couldn’t help but draw comparisons to the storybooks she so dearly loved growing up. Fhirdiad being set on fire was the peak of the climax and Rhea collapsing before stuttering out a final breath was the end of the crescendo. Everything that should happen afterwards would be a peaceful conclusion to everyone’s character arcs, a slow and blissful walk towards the happily ever after. _

_ If one were to adapt this story, however, they would probably cut out the scene of the Black Eagles frantically setting out the flames that still engulfed the capital city of Faerghus and rescuing whoever was still alive amidst all the damage the Knights of Seiros inflicted upon innocent bystanders. _

_ The Knights of Seiros did this.  _ Annette and Ashe  _ did this. Or even if they didn’t personally throw the flames upon the streets and houses, they had still watched the Knights do this and did nothing stop them. Not even a single protest. _

_ Ingrid had spent her entire childhood thinking knights were the embodiment of righteous justice, that they existed to help the poor and the weak. But now she had witnessed with her own eyes knights that burned an entire city full of harmless civilians because their liege ordered them to. Because fulfilling orders was more important than any honor or justice chivalric tales loved to preach. Because it was more important to please a madwoman who is clearly not in her right mind than to preserve the lives of the innocent.  _

_ And Ingrid couldn’t even find it in herself to pin all the blame on Rhea and say that it is not the fault of the knight if they do atrocious things, that if they do atrocious things, it is only because they serve a morally reprehensible liege. Because Dimitri was a liege who believed in justice for the weak and the poor but scores of knights had transformed themselves into Demonic Beasts in his name, of their own free will. They had decided that for themselves and Ingrid couldn’t tell if even Dimitri was privy to their plans to do something so extreme, just to stop the emperor’s army. _

_ The problem lay not with knights that happened to be terrible people. The problem was that knighthood as a whole encouraged this mindset. _

_ (Ingrid should have realized this when it was knights who slaughtered scores of villagers in Duscur and set aflame their land, all in the name of the dead king. She should have realized this instead of letting herself be brainwashed by hate and prejudice. As a child, she did not want to open her eyes to the idea that her childhood heroes would do such a horrible thing, so she had believed lords of Faerghus when they had preached that the victims had deserved it. Ingrid was an adult now, and she cannot close her eyes any longer. She cannot make herself believe that the people of Fhirdiad would’ve been happy to give up their lives for Rhea’s will, just because someone supposedly holy decreed it. She cannot. She will not. _

_ (If only she had come to this conclusion before she had said such horrible things to Dedue.) _

_ What could Ingrid aspire to be, now that she had the choice? Was that not why she decided to take up her lance in the name of Emperor Edelgard? So that her future would not be dictated by the whims of her blood? But what could she want to be now that she knew knights for what they really were? _

_ Perhaps it was not real knights she had looked up to, whose blades had killed very real people, but storybook knights who never had to question their morals or doubt their righteous lieges. Those knights could never be ruined for her because they were not real people, only glossy pictures in the pages of a book. Even chivalric tales of Loog and Kyphon felt fictional in a sense, what with all of the fantastic details that would surely make a historian’s eyebrows raise. Glenn was the closest flesh and blood incarnation of those storybook knights she loved so much, and perhaps he’ll stay that forever in her memory, because he died young, died before he saw what atrocities knights were willing to do in the king’s name, died before he could be tested if he was of a similar nature. _

_ And what was it about those storybook knights and Glenn that made Ingrid want to model herself after them? They directly clashed against the expectations of a noblewoman with a Crest, the very opposite of a dainty wife and mother who wore long dresses and drank tea with other wives and mothers, and perhaps _ that _ was what drew Ingrid towards them. They were independent and free in a way that Ingrid, uncomfortable and dissatisfied with her pre-written role as a nobleman’s daughter and eventually some nobleman’s wife, deeply yearned to be. _

_ Maybe it was not a knight Ingrid yearned to be, but a fictional character. The main character of her own tale, a hero that forged through trials and tribulations and not the damsel that was given as a reward by the story’s end. Maybe all she longed for was not a liege she would stain her blade for, but the freedom to be the author of her own future, the one in charge of how she will be remembered. _

_ The rest of her life stretched out ahead of Ingrid as the Black Eagles prepared to leave Fhirdiad once they were sure they did all that they could. A blank page, empty and begging for something to be written there. _

_ Ingrid held the quill that will write the words. Not her father, not any king or liege, not Glenn’s ghost, but her, and only her. _

* * *

It should've been obvious Felix would leave after the war against the Agarthans was over and done with. He had said over and over that he was best fit for fighting enemies, not negotiating deals and being diplomatic. He had told Edelgard he had no interest in being a part of her new government and Fraldarius is best left in the hands of anyone with the talent and mind for it. She did not disagree with him. She had told him in a world without the Crest system, his future was his to make.

And so Felix left to chase the next battle, wherever it was in Fodlan. It shouldn't be hard to find one; there were plenty of people disgruntled with the outcome of the war and refused to submit to the emperor, or more obviously, the change the emperor wanted to enact. He took his blade, sent a terse letter to Fraldarius for his remaining family to read, and proceeded to leave Sylvain behind with the rest of the Black Eagles without a proper goodbye.

Sylvain wished he could be pissed off. He wanted so badly to be angry. Instead, what he felt was emptiness and perhaps a tinge of disappointment, but disappointment was what followed after having high expectations, and Sylvain tried his best not to have those, especially when it came to people.

He had tried to believe in the best of Miklan as a child, and look where that got him. If anything, Sylvain should feel good that Felix was at least trying to be helpful for Fodlan's sake and not being destructive and selfish like his brother. 

But unfortunately, it seemed as if someone else had expected more from Felix and believed in the best of him.

“You don’t understand!” Bernadetta wailed, clutching the ends of her hair as Dorothea soothingly wrapped her arms around her, rubbing circles into the younger woman’s back. “I had a plan and everything! I had a plan to keep him from leaving! I _ knew _ he was going to run away but I thought I could--” She paused, choking back another heavy sob. 

Her voice then lowered to a near whisper.

“I thought I could save him from himself. I’m so stupid.”

Dorothea lifted Bernadetta’s tear-wracked face and gently wiped at her cheeks with her manicured fingers. “I know, Bern. I know. And don’t you dare say you’re stupid. I know so many women like you, so many women who have been left behind by no good men. You don’t have any responsibility to fix him. If he’s decided that he has no obligation to even say goodbye to you as he leaves, then he’s just garbage. Simple as that, Bern, simple as that.”

“But he’s not like that! I--!”

“I bet I can find him,” Hubert said darkly. Already, a bright flame flickered to life in the palm of his hand. “Don’t fret, Bernadetta. If that man thinks he can just  _ upend himself _ out of your life without any explanation, after you and him saved each other’s lives countless times on the battlefield, he’ll be duly punished for  _ daring _ to--”

“Hubert, I don’t want you to do that! Please calm down,” Bernadetta whined, but she sounded more exasperated than frightened of Hubert’s clear bloodthirst.

_ They really are friends despite everything _ , Sylvain silently remarked in his head as he looked between Hubert and Bernadetta, the former scowling and murmuring the benefits of eliminating Felix like a wicked rat, even offering Bernadetta a way to choose how the man who broke her heart shall meet his end like a merchant rattling off reasons you should trust their services.

“What a bastard that guy is for just up and leaving you like this,” Caspar growled. “And I thought he was so cool, too! Were we friends? No! Did he like me at all? Probably not! But he was really nice towards you in particular, Bernadetta, so I thought that meant he was a decent guy deep down, and he couldn’t even uphold that! If I ever see him again, I’ll punch him across the room. Then while he’s knocked out, I’ll run and get you so you can also smack him really hard!”

“I must admit I didn’t really acquaint myself with Felix Hugo Fraldarius while he was in our class or in our army, but if he’s the type of man who would dash your heart to pieces after a courtship that spanned years and survived a war, then he is the absolute lowest of the low,” Ferdinand huffed.

“W-W-We weren’t courting,” Bernadetta stuttered, her face flushing again.

“ _ Oh _ ,” Ferdinand’s face turned red upon being corrected. He cleared his throat. “Well, he’s still the lowest of the low! Definitely does not deserve to be called a noble, even if he  _ did _ willingly give up his title!”

“I mean, even if you weren’t officially courting, I’m pretty sure you were in love with him,” Linhardt said bluntly. Upon hearing Bernadetta squeak with embarrassment, he nodded. “Definitely in love. Don’t worry though, Bernadetta. If he’s a man who decided he can’t live without shedding blood, then I find him profoundly disgusting, too. You don’t need someone like that in your life.”

“I still agree with Hubert that he needs to be hunted down,” Petra interjected. “Preferably with a very sharp blade.”

“Oh  _ finally _ , someone here has sense. I already have a plan in mind--”

“Hubert, we are not going out of our way to  _ assassinate  _ Felix!”

“Oh, I don’t know, Ferdie. I think it’s a good bonding activity for all of us. I’ll take up a sword again if it’s the name of your honor, Bern!”

“If you all  _ are  _ going on a hunting trip, then count me out.”

“Come on, Linhardt!”

“ _ No. _ ”

It was strange, to be on the outskirts of such a conversation. Sylvain felt like he was intruding upon them, even though he had fought a war with them. Then again, it wasn't like he was invited to the emperor's group meetings along with them and Lysithea and Constance. Edelgard had accepted him into her army but she did not give him her trust. In fact, what with all of the speeches about how he wasn't a captive and the only soldiers she will accept are those who truly believe in her cause, she had probably expected him to flee at some point.

The Eagles fawned over Bernadetta because she was one of their own. She likely went through that spectacular transformation into a bolder, more confident woman for their sake. They were probably keeping their distance from Sylvain because they had expected that he and Ingrid had each other to weep with. That wouldn't be a bad assumption if they were still on speaking terms but alas.

And the funny thing was that Sylvain thought if Ingrid ever became a stranger to him, it would be because of an explosive argument, her finally getting sick of his shit and writing him off as irredeemable. But instead, they came out the other side of a war looking completely unrecognizable to one another, with one of their friends dead and the other one had fucked off without them. They had nothing to say to each other that wouldn't drift back to the past. And maybe the past was all that they had in common anymore.

Later into the night, Sylvain was in his room, trying to find solace somehow by staring at the ceiling, when there was a knock on his door.

Behind it, was Bernadetta, carrying a candle to illuminate her face in the dark of the hallway.

“Bernadetta? You should’ve come at a later hour. That’s when I come up with the  _ best _ pick-up lines. Right now, I guess I could say your face is stunning in the moonlight. A rare Adrestian flower I’ve never had an opportunity to come across in person!”

“I don’t like it when you try to talk to me like that,” Bernadetta said, voice firm. “You’re clearly trying to shoo me away. It’s insulting.”

“I’m sorry,” the words immediately fell out of Sylvain’s mouth. He was at a loss when he looked at a Bernadetta who bravely met his gaze without flinching, though her fingers still trembling around the grasp in which she held her candle still betrayed a hint of anxiety. It just no longer overwhelmed her entire body like it used to. “I didn’t know you took such offense.”

“You didn’t used to flirt with me back at the academy,” Bernadetta murmured. “Even though you scared me as much as everyone else did five years ago, I appreciated that. I would want you to return to that, please.”

“Okay then,” Sylvain nodded. “But like? Why are you here, Bernadetta, if you didn’t want to have some sort of secret rendezvous with me?”

“I came here because of the obvious,” she breathed out, like she was scared of the words that came next. “Felix.”

“Oh.”

“I-I-I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have bothered you like this!” Bernadetta blurted out. “Stupid Bernie! I’m just saying that, well, we both miss him, you know? My friends are so sweet, trying to defend my honor and everything, but that’s not what I really wanna hear right now. And you knew him for way longer than I have, so I thought . . . . . we could just cry together.”

“You’re asking me to cry?” Sylvain asked. He tried to look back at the last time he cried openly, in front of another person, and the results were disappointing and sparse.

“N-N-No, I meant . . . . ugh, I just meant you’ve been left behind by him, too. You’re also hurt, I can tell. I thought that . . . . well, maybe we could comfort each other.”

“Ah, so we’re forming the Felix Hugo Fraldarius Broken Heart Club, are we? Just what we needed: solidarity in surviving the most surly and unlikely heartbreaker out there!”

"H-H-Heartbreaker?" Bernadetta's pupils blew wide at that.

"Are you still denying that you were at least a little bit smitten with him?"

Sylvain had no idea how he hadn't thrown himself out the window at this point. It was a miracle that his voice has remained level.

" . . . . . I honestly don't know if I was in love with him," Bernadetta whispered, voice trembling at the edges. "I've been terrified of men for so long, more so than I was already scared of people in general. I knew Felix was really special to me, though. I loved his smile, and those small moments where he's not constantly thinking of training and just . . . . . relaxes, you know? I wanted to bring him back to Varley with me. There's something I need to do there, and his presence makes me feel brave, so I was hoping he would accompany me. And then . . . . ."

"He went and disappeared on us," Sylvain finished for her.

"Yeah," she nodded. Her eyes were wet. She blinked rapidly for a moment, probably to hide her tears.

"You didn't deserve that," Sylvain said, voice steady. "Don't think for a second you didn't do enough to make him stay. You tried harder than I ever could, properly  _ showed  _ him you cared unlike me, and he still did this to you. That's just unforgivable."

"What about you? He was your best friend. You're hurt, too."

"Me? I deserve this," he shrugged. "I didn't do jack shit for him back when he began distancing himself from the prince, never asked him why he changed the way he did, and I couldn't do jack shit for him after Tailtean, so I deserve the treatment he gave me. But you didn't. You refused to give up on him. You were better of a friend than I ever was to him."

"I just wish I knew why everything changed after Tailtean," Bernadetta shook her head. "It was after that he  _ really  _ started to change for the worse."

"He’s always been obsessed with the now late king," Sylvain said. It didn't feel right to use Dimitri's name. "Even when it looked like he hated him, he never stopped thinking of him. Guess he never comprehended a world where he's no longer with us."

"Sylvain," Bernadetta said, lifting her head to reveal a gaze that demanded to be met. "You admitted that he broke your heart too, right?"

"Huh. Guess I did."

"So it's true . . . . . you were in love with him, too."

"It's honestly a little complicated," Sylvain shrugged, and he knew that sounded like backtracking, but here's the thing.

Sylvain supposed that he did love Felix in a way that Margrave Gautier wouldn’t have approved of and that the nobles seeking to pawn off their daughters to him would outright seethe over, but that hadn’t really mattered in the end. Because Felix loved Dimitri in a way that Lord Rodrigue most definitely saw as acceptable if he never chided or gave Felix grief over it and maybe even saw as inevitable (if certain stories about Lord Blaiddyd and Lady Fraldarius were true) but alas, the royal bloodline needed to attend to their duty of producing Crest babies, right? Maybe in another lifetime, Felix, one where Dimitri might’ve been born a fair-haired princess instead of a fair-haired prince, or one where you didn’t decide to stab him in the back and abandon him to pledge fealty to a woman you didn’t really believe in to fight against a system you never really suffered under, all because of a petty teenage rebellion against your father and your family and the entire purpose you were born, right?

Life sucks like that, doesn’t it, Felix?

"Even if you weren’t, your pain is still real and exists. You can't pretend it doesn't."

"I'm sorry, I must've been a terrible person to go to for comfort, haven't I?" Sylvain said disparagingly, prepared to close the door on Bernadetta. "You shouldn't bother with me and my messy feelings. I didn't even end up saying anything that was different than what Dorothea or Petra would tell you, so you should just go to them and I'll just leave you alone from now on, okay?"

"No!" Bernadetta caught the door with her hand before Sylvain could close it all the way. Her eyes were firm when their gazes met again. "After a conversation like this, what kind of person would I be if I just left you alone?"

Sylvain was taken aback. Five years ago, he would’ve regarded Bernadetta as  _ pretty  _ but not worth chasing after, but standing before him as she was right now, she stood out to him as  _ bold _ and  _ confident  _ and  _ compassionate.  _ How incredible that this was what she evolved into after fighting a war that didn’t demand her place in it, when she already hated the act of killing. Meanwhile, Sylvain should’ve gotten everything he wanted--no father to tether him down, no noble obligations he never asked for--and yet he still found himself miserable.

“Can I come in?” Bernadetta softly asked, her gaze still steely but somehow also empathetic. Like she saw right through Sylvain but was still willing to give him understanding.

Sylvain had no choice but to let her inside.

* * *

_ “So how are we doing this, Your Majesty? Do I get on my knees? Do I cut my palm with the blade of your axe to artistically symbolize how willing I am to die for your cause?” _

_ “Now what makes you think I would want anything so frivolous from you, Sylvain? Simply you being here against the expectations of your family is already enough to solidify your loyalty to me. I have no need for any ceremony.” _

_ “If that’s how you want to do it, fine. I’m just saying we’re missing out on a lavish scene out of an opera where I kiss your ring and swear everlasting fealty to you.” _

_ “Dorothea  _ did _ tell me talking to you was tiring. I’m starting to understand why.” _

_ “Oh, she’s talking about me? What’s she saying?” _

_ “I’m going to develop a headache if it turns out you defected from your House all because of a pretty woman.” _

_ “First of all, that’s not why I’m here. Second, even if it was, why does it matter to you? You need warm bodies to throw at the enemy. Why question the reason why the body is at your disposal?” _

_ “Because I am not Rhea. I do not see humans as worshippers I can toss away at a moment’s notice when I need it. Every human being has something they strive for, something they would be willing to bloody their hands for. This is not a glamorous path to take. It is a path of sacrifice and bloodshed. I need to know that you truly believe in my rhetoric, that the Church should not rule over Fodlan the way it does.” _

_ “I was there when the archbishop turned into a dragon and screamed out for the professor’s heart. Isn’t that enough to turn a person into a radical?” _

_ “You disappoint me, Sylvain. I had high hopes that you had a vision you were willing to throw away your life for. You do realize that this path we are taking may require the head of your father, correct? Your mother? Your former king, a man that was your friend once upon a time? You have already sacrificed these fundamental connections to swear under my cause and yet you joke that you’re here because you’re scared of dragons?” _

_ “If you keep yelling at me like this, that vein in your forehead is going to burst. Saints, you’re more terrifying than Ingrid.” _

_ “Congratulations. You angered an emperor and escaped with your life.” _

_ “Wait, does that imply you were gonna kill me?” _

_ “Don’t give me that look, I was being sarcastic.” _

_ “The Flame Emperor is capable of being sarcastic. This is more shocking than learning the archbishop was a dragon.” _

_ “I feel as if I’ve walked around in several circles talking to you.” _

_ “It’s fun to test my limits with women who can snuff my lights out. Last joke, I promise. Anyway, the things you were saying about me having a vision I would throw away my life for? It feels wrong for me to answer such a question. You probably expect some grand ambition, maybe something about me revolutionizing Gautier’s system of government, but honestly? If I could give away the position to anyone who wanted it, I would. I never asked for that responsibility. In fact, I think being my father’s heir ruined my life in too many ways to count. I know that sounds selfish and privileged, especially considering how Ingrid has been hungry in ways I’ve never been and Felix lost his brother, but where else can I pinpoint the moment where I began to realize my only worth derived from something I had no control over? It’s so stupid and yet it’s the truth. My truth.” _

_ “Sylvain . . . . .” _

_ “I'm seeing a look in your eye that's either saying ‘Wow, this guy has more worth than I previously thought’ or ‘This is the moment I begin to fall in love with Sylvain Jose Gautier.’” _

_ “I can still call for Hubert any time I want.” _

_ “Okay, okay, okay! I get it! I get it! I am shutting up in three, two, one . . . .” _

_ “Sylvain. Look at me.” _

_ “Huh?” _

_ “A dream of complete mundanity is still a dream. If all you wish for after the war is to give up your title and live near the sea with a couple of pets, then I’ll be sure that we will fight for that future. You have been hurt by Fodlan’s systems and traditions as anyone else, and my vision seeks to free everyone of the shackles of Rhea’s rule, even those who seem to be privileged by our standards. In fact, I am a descendant of Wilhelm I and the blood of Seiros flows in my veins, and yet I do not wish to be a divine ruler like Rhea. I only seek to gain power to remove it from those who are corrupt or stagnant. To be the emperor of Fodlan until my dying breath would be doing the exact same as all the useless nobles I despise. Once I have done all that I can do for Fodlan, I wish to step down and retire somewhere quiet.” _

_ “Wow, Your Majesty. I never expected to realize we would have something in common. Maybe when the war is over, our plans for retirement can align?” _

_ “Hahahaha. Not on your life, Sylvain Jose Gautier.” _

* * *

Ingrid had once thought that if she couldn’t be a knight, she was doomed to be a nobleman’s wife, a bartering chip exchanged for money her family sorely needed to feed her brothers and their people. 

She thought she would be doomed to a duty of bearing children for a man who sought power through the supposedly blessed blood in her veins, would only be mentioned in history not as a dashing hero who protected the innocent, but as someone’s wife who supported her husband from the shadows or the mother of someone who eventually went on to become a dashing hero who protected the innocent.

Ingrid was not a knight. She forfeited her right to become one when she sided with the Empire over the Kingdom and the Church, and could not think of knights with the same starry eyes she did as a child ever again after witnessing the Knights of Seiros set fire to the capital city of Faerghus.

But she was not a nobleman’s wife either.

Ingrid was not a knight, but she has stories told of her, one where she is not the supportive wife or some dashing hero’s mother, but a hero in her own right. She was one of the brave soldiers who fought in the Black Eagle Strike Force, the emperor’s trusted comrades who helped her dethrone the Immaculate One and the Tempest King. She walked around the streets of Enbarr and saw children re-enacting the battle against the Knights of Seiros and the Immaculate One, and she saw young girls fight to get to be the pegasus knight who personally fell Thunder Catherine, the Immaculate One’s most wicked, bloodthirsty enforcers.

(She once walked down another street to find a group of children re-enacting the Battle at the Tailtean Plains, and one boy gleefully brandished a training sword and a shield and called himself one of the heroes who abandoned his country because he knew it to be evil and dead set on clinging to stubborn tradition, and then went to playfully knock down one of his friends who wore a tattered cape and growled in a manner that was unlike a human being and more like a feral dog.

(She saw those children playing and fought the urge to pen another letter to Sylvain, to ask him if he has yet to see any sign of Felix.)

She was not a nobleman’s wife. She was not forced into duty that requires her to shed away her lance and armor and languish instead on a birthing bed, to do as her husband commanded her. She has instead returned to Galatea, where she was met with wary looks she did not shy away from, and instead went to work to help the commoners of her father’s land without having to give up her dignity and her pride. It was not noble duty that brought her here, but her own convictions. She was here because she did not want the children of Galatea to know hunger like she did as a child, though their parents may suspect she was out to return the old order of her family ruling theirs.

She doesn’t intend to rule Galatea, only bring its people out of poverty. Rule was no longer her birthright, because in the emperor’s world, there’s no such thing as birthright. Perhaps it will take a while for Fodlan to recognize that, after a thousand years of the same old system of inheritance and feudalism.

She was not a nobleman’s wife but she wore a ring on her finger, one that did not belong to any noble house but was bought with money that was carefully saved up, prepared to be given to her in a proposal that had brought tears to Ingrid’s eyes. 

When Ingrid was a young girl, she often found herself daydreaming of a world where she had no obligations to marry, that maybe one of her brothers bore a Crest instead or her father had stumbled upon wealth without having to barter away his children like gambling chips, and in those dreams, she found herself a knight who never took a husband at all, who braved through trials and tribulations for a king she knew to be her dear friend but nothing more, who did fought alongside the elder son of House Fraldarius but did not wear his family’s ring.

She had thought this to mean that she did not care for romance entirely, that she aspired most to be a hero of legend and not someone’s beloved. She grew up with Sylvain, who seemed to yearn for love from every pore in his body and yet did not know how to ask for it, and Felix, who used to openly desire to marry the crown prince one day, much to the gentle laughs of his brother and father, but did not seem to want to covet someone’s heart herself out of her own volition.

She knew now that she could find herself caring for romance, find herself yearning for someone’s touch to help ease her through nightmares of Fhirdiad burning once more, but she did not care to be a nobleman’s wife. She would much rather be in bed with another woman, be able to touch soft curves and breath in gently perfumed skin.

Ingrid was not a nobleman’s wife, but she wore a precious ring that was given to her by a beautiful songstress of the most devoted heart.

Dorothea had proposed, but they decided to not throw the wedding immediately. There were too many things to do after a war's end.

Ingrid had initially thought their relationship would be a long distance one, at least until she was satisfied that she had done all that she could for Galatea, at least until Dorothea had arrived on her doorstep with her belongings.

"Did you really think I would be content to stay in Enbarr while my fiancee was trying to save Galatea by herself, without any help? I can live fine pushing back my return to the stage for a couple more years, my darling Ingrid. In fact, I believe I can be of use to you here. Trust me, I know better than to ignore the cries of the starving. You have the best person here to help you during this time of crisis, Ingrid. I'm not going to leave you here alone."

And Ingrid couldn't help it. She cried. She had cried very hard, in a very unladylike manner that would've earned the scorn of her old governess, and ended up throwing herself into Dorothea's arms.

This was not the glamorous storybook life Ingrid had dreamed about living as a child. She has long put down her lance and armor. She had no need for them in a time of peace.

It was a strange thought she never thought she would ever think of, but she found herself sincerely hoping she'll never have to take them up again.

* * *

_ “If you’re not here to talk about the next battle, then I don’t want to have to listen to you.” _

_ “Felix, you can’t expect me to believe what happened at Arianrhod wouldn’t have affected you.” _

_ “Do you think I’m beginning to regret my decision to turn my back on the boar? I’m not. I chose this path and I fully knew well that my father would be disappointed in me because of it. But as long as this path takes me far away from my family’s tradition of offering their lives up on a silver platter for whoever wears the crown, then I’ll continue to walk down it, no matter where it leads.” _

_ “Still, hearing your father admit that he is willing to kill you because you would not fall in line to family tradition must be heartrending. I cannot imagine the woe I would feel if my own father did such a thing.” _

_ “Your father gave you a crown and mine told me that it is better for me to be dead than a turncoat. I don’t think you could ever empathize with me.” _

_ “I know what it's like to be left behind. I am the last Hresvelg remaining after many years of suffering and betrayal. It is a lonely existence. You have lost what remains of your familial connections and it was because you pledged allegiance to my cause. I would be a monster if I did not feel guilt on your behalf.” _

_ “I don’t want your guilt. I don’t even want your approval. I’m here in your army because it is the exact opposite of dying for the boar. My family has made a legacy out of living and dying by the royal command and I aim to break free of that.” _

_ “I must assume then that you wouldn’t die for me, either?” _

_ “Of course I wouldn't. You aren’t special at all. You oppose the boar and the archbishop, who has also proven herself to be mad, and that’s enough for me.” _

_ “I am glad that you don’t see me the way the Knights of Seiros and the devout see Rhea, but don’t make it seem as if I have some sort of grand conflict with Dimitri. I most assuredly do not think of him as much as he thinks of me. I’m also slightly concerned that your convictions hinge entirely too much around whatever Dimitri does.” _

_ “Are you accusing me of being obsessed with him?” _

_ “Well, do you have any idea what to do with your life after he is defeated and the war is over?” _

_ “Continue on living my life without the burden of duty. Prove that a Fraldarius can live without a Blaiddyd to bend a knee to. I will have proved my father truly wrong when that future comes to pass. That alone is enough to satisfy me, simple as it sounds.” _

_ “I find that rather petty and terribly short-sighted.” _

_ “Like I said, I don’t want your approval. You are not my liege nor will I ever call you 'Your Majesty.' Go back to your sycophants and pretend you care about their well-being instead as you send them out to die.” _

* * *

Sylvain needed to accept Felix was gone. Like, really  _ really _ needs to accept it.

He made his choice. He decided to run away like a coward instead of face the truth. Maybe Felix turned out to be like Annette’s shit stain of a father and decided that running away would be his penance, better to make his life difficult and alienate himself from people who have told him over and over that they love him than have the audacity to be  _ happy _ or at least try to be happy after surviving something horrible.

Sylvain gets it, though. The idea of being happy after doing so many atrocious things, doing them all  _ knowingly _ , made bile gather up in the back of his throat. He wasn’t brainwashed, wasn’t held hostage by the wicked emperor and her cohorts. And while Sylvain’s father probably saw his son betraying him as only a material loss, Rodrigue must’ve mourned the last of his family turning his back on him. And Felix had gutted him with a sword.

So Sylvain understood the grief Felix must be feeling.

But he will never forgive Felix for making Bernadetta cry.

“Can you tell me I have to do this before I lose my nerve and start looking for excuses?”

“You have to do this. What you’re doing is brave and I think the world of you for it.”

“Y-Y-You didn’t have to include that last sentence,” Bernadetta broke out into another adorable flush. “But thank you. I never imagined having to do this alone. Before the war ended, I had dreamed of doing this with Felix. Silly, right?”

The two of them were outside Garreg Mach, loading Bernadetta’s belongings into a carriage. There were many farewell gifts from the Eagles to handle with care.

“It’s not silly at all,” Sylvain said seriously. “You’re going back to Varley, renouncing your noble claim, and confronting your father. Meanwhile, I don’t think I’ll ever have the courage to return to Gautier. Instead, I’m making Her Majesty do all of the paperwork necessary to disinherit me.”

“Are you sure that’s the responsible thing to do? Hasn’t Gautier been at war with Sreng for a hundred years?”

“I’m pretty sure the reason we’ve been at eternal war with Sreng is because my family has always shouldered the responsibility for dealing with them all by ourselves. Not to mention no one in my family ever considered putting down the blades and arrows in favor of actual diplomacy. I trust that Her Majesty’s and the new Prime Minister’s foreign relations policies are better than my not at all dearly departed father’s.”

“But is there really no one in Gautier you want to say goodbye to, not even just for closure?”

“My mother is alive,” Sylvain shrugged. His tone of voice was irreverent. “I could go see her again. Don’t know if she’ll resent me for the whole ‘you led a battalion of soldiers that killed your father,’ but it’s not like my parents were very happily married either. They couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as each other. My father only cared about my mother to the extent of how many children he could reap out of her. From her perspective, she probably never wanted to be his wife. Which I guess means she never really wanted to be a mother either.”

“My mother acts like she doesn’t know my father,” Bernadetta said, a faraway look in her eye. “Part of me admires her for escaping his control and having a life of her own, but a part of me hates her for leaving me alone with him. Sometimes it felt like I was only born so I could take her place, so she would be free to pursue her own dreams. Either way, I don’t have a good relationship with her. I’ll thank her for sending me to Garreg Mach and allowing me to meet Edelgard and all of my friends, but that’s it.”

“That’s a good perspective to take,” Sylvain nodded. He shuffled his weight from one foot to another. “So . . . . . what are you going to do when you see your father again?”

Bernadetta’s hands shook. She almost dropped a heavy trunk she was holding, before Sylvain caught her and took the weight off of her hands.

“Honestly,” Bernadetta sighed, “that’s why I wanted Felix to come with me so badly. I thought his presence would keep me from losing my nerve in front of my father. I needed him for courage, believe it or not. He gave me that.”

The space between Sylvain and Bernadetta was silent before Sylvain opened his mouth to say, “What a dickbag he is, then. For not being here for you when you needed him most.”

Bernadetta shook her head. “It’s not like I told him why this was important for me. I never even confided in him everything about my family. From his perspective, I must’ve looked like I was trying to take him home to get my father’s approval to marry him. Not that I would ever want his input on a husband anyways.”

For a brief moment, there was a flash of anger in Bernadetta's eyes. Wrath as sharp as a bolt of lightning, and just like lightning, it only existed in the short span of a heartbeat.

“Bernadetta,” Sylvain said. His tongue felt dry and useless in his mouth, but he surprisingly found words he needed to get out. He pushed on, heart beating rapidly in his chest. “Take me to Varley with you.”

“W-W-What?”

“Take me to Varley with you,” Sylvain repeated, with much more weight in his voice. “I’ll be your courage while you confront your father. I might not be Felix or Edelgard or Dorothea or Hubert or anyone else who would probably be a better presence there, but I promise you that I will not leave your side while you fight for your freedom from your family. You can count on that.”

“A-A-Are you sure? You really have nowhere else to be? The things I’ll have to tell my father aren’t pleasant and I don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire.”

“I’ve had many nasty words thrown my way, Bernadetta,” Sylvain said. “Ever since I was a kid, too. There’s nothing your father could do to me that I can’t handle. You shouldn’t be alone as you do this. I’ll keep you company and make sure you won’t back down or run away. I'm from Faerghus, and there, we take promises very seriously. Over there, it's 'cross your heart or you will very much actually die.'"

"T-T-That's not something you should take pride in," Bernadetta said but she was laughing. Saints above, Sylvain Jose Gautier made this woman laugh and it felt like an accomplishment of a heroic champion.

Bernadetta laughed, and it was a sweet beautiful noise that Sylvain wanted to capture in a bottle. The fact that he had thought that about a woman  _ sincerely _ didn’t catch up to him until night came, both Sylvain and Bernadetta cooped up in the carriage as it continued its trek to Varley, Bernadetta fast asleep, moonlight illuminating the soft edges of her face and framing her in a silver glow, and Sylvain caught between looking out the window and looking at her.

_ It would be very easy to fall in love with you, Bernadetta von Varley,  _ was the last cognizant thought he had before he was taken away by sleep.

* * *

_ Dedue had left Tailtean with his life. That is something that most people will deny as false. The story most people knew was that Dedue had sacrificed his humanity for Dimitri, as a show of how far his devotion will go for the man. But that simply did not happen. That was not what took place. _

_ Dedue was close to going through with transforming himself, but had been foiled by the Ashen Demon, the emperor’s most trusted general. _

_ Sometimes Sylvain still had trouble recognizing that as the truth, but it was. Of course what he saw was the truth, he was  _ there _. The version of events that was well known throughout Fodlan was a lie. So was the story of the emperor decapitating the Tempest King. _

_ Sylvain didn't know how the false retelling of what happened spread so quickly throughout the continent, but it was a story that the common folk spread like wildfire. _

_ They say that Dimitri had died by Edelgard's hands. That she called him obsessive and delusional as he knelt bleeding at her feet. That he used his last breaths to damn her to the eternal flames of the goddess's wrath. _

_ That was not what happened that day. _

_ His last words had been given to Dedue, and he did not use his last words to spew hate. He did not even seem to glance at Edelgard, despite his consuming obsession with killing her before he fell. _

_ “Dedue, it seems I will die . . . . before I could get revenge for everyone . . . . . my family, my friends, my home . . . . . everything that truly mattered to me, I couldn’t--” _

_ “You’re wrong! Because of you, I was able to live on until today. You saved me. These past nine years . . . I am proud to have been at your side. It was a joy I never could’ve hoped for. Despite all, I count myself a lucky man.” _

_ “Is that so? I see . . . . I am glad . . . .” _

_ He had not been beheaded. He had not died at the emperor’s feet. Sylvain had no idea where such stories came from, but they were not spread by Edelgard or any of her allies. The false tale sometimes reached the emperor’s ear by word of mouth, but Edelgard shook her head and dismissed as just more of her detractors trying to further sully her name, and she didn’t care of their efforts to do so. _

_ She did not expect to be beloved by the people. That was not her end goal. She did not care if her subjects adored her or cursed her name. She only wanted to do right by those who were hurt by the nobility or the Church and didn’t care if it made her an unpopular leader. _

_ Sometimes Sylvain found himself convinced by the false version of events. It was an easier story to believe in, that the long conflict between the king and emperor ended with one of them dropping the executioner’s blade on the other. It was a more dramatic conclusion, and that was probably why people from what remained of the Kingdom took to it so well. That, and it allowed them to paint Edelgard as even more cruel and callous, to have her taunt Dimitri and call him a madman after he failed to protect everything he held dear. _

_ Maybe some of those formerly of the Kingdom were also happy to erase Dedue from the story, to say that he turned himself into a monster and then died by Imperial hands. So while Dedue was being detained by Hubert, who still believed that he was a threat to Her Majesty though Edelgard herself ordered that his life will be spared, word had already spread that the dead king’s beloved vassal had died. _

_ Sylvain did not try to speak to Dedue while he was under the emperor’s jurisdiction. Really, what did they have to say to each other? _

_ Not only did they take Dimitri away from him, they had also taken away Annette and Ashe. _

_ Eventually, Dedue was let free under the promise that he would never attempt to seek revenge. He had no loyalty to the Kingdom, only Dimitri, and though his dearest friend was dead, he had dreams elsewhere. He still had his dream of restoring Duscur. He deserved to be free to fulfill that dream, even though he would have to do so alone. _

_ Sylvain was of course happy that Dedue managed to leave Fodlan behind with his life and still something to live for. It was a much happier ending than the popular retelling of events gave him. The truth of what occurred had spared him. _

_ The truth of what occurred perhaps gave Dimitri a kinder death, too. He was able to have one last conversation with a friend and maybe even found a little closure, however small, after Dedue affirmed to him that he would never regret meeting and fighting alongside Dimitri, even if they both lost. The expression on his face as he took in his last breath was peaceful. _

_ The truth of what occurred was hard for Sylvain to swallow, even though the truth spared Dedue’s life and gave Dimitri a more dignified death. Because it would’ve been easier to cope if he could say that it was Edelgard who killed Dimitri. He would be able to distance himself from it. It would be very easy to resent Edelgard, even though he had pledged his life to her cause. _

_ The truth of what occurred was that it was not Edelgard, Hubert, Byleth, or even Sylvain himself who struck the final blow upon Dimitri. That was not what took place. _

_ Dimitri was put out of his misery by Felix’s blade and after the Empire declared victory, Felix had taken Areadbhar, took the cloak the king wore during his final moments, and left to wander Fodlan to further feed his blade more blood. _

_ The truth of what occurred was a happier story for Dimitri, who was dead, and Dedue, who was exiled, and yet somehow more painful and difficult to accept for Felix, Sylvain, and Ingrid, who supposedly came out of this war the victors. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, the word count of this chapter got away from me. I have a lot of feelings about CF Childhood Friend Trio.
> 
> Back when I was conceiving this fic several months ago, I was very upset that Sylvain's endings remained the same every route, unlike Ingrid and Felix, and that in every ending, he takes the title that he never wanted, even in Crimson Flower, where one would think he'd be free of noble obligations. My views have slightly changed since then now that I understand that he ends the war with Sreng and has quite the aptitude for politics and crucially understands what's wrong with Faerghus after the Tragedy beyond the whole "chivalry has created a cult that worships death blah blah blah blah." But like, in Crimson Flower, it would still be kinda pointless for him to fight a war and sever his ties to Dimitri and potentially other close friends only to end up in the same place he would be in if he didn't leave the Kingdom.
> 
> I just want him to be a supportive house husband who loves his career wife and raises beautiful children, stopping the cycle of treating children as only valuable for Crests that has plagued his family and ruined his childhood. I'm not even a fan of him, I just think he deserves one ending where he does that.
> 
> Also, I feel like I must add that if you are reading this fic expecting Edelgard to be the endgame villain and the story to be a grand quest to overthrow her, you will be disappointed because that is not the fic I intend to write. It's also not a fic where Edelgard or any of the Black Eagles will be hunting down Anastasia because 1) she is a child who does not know who her father is or what he has done, and 2) just because she is his child does not mean she will be the same as him: all she has in common with him are her looks and her Crest.
> 
> Anastasia also has no motivation to seek revenge unless she either mourns the lack of a father in her life or she really wants to be princess of Faerghus and wants that birthright back. She does neither. She is not that type of character.
> 
> I've been receiving comments from people who probably expected the exact opposite of what I intend to write and I'm writing this author's note to dispel any misconceptions anyone has about the plot of this fic.


End file.
